Weekly round-up #155

Weekly Round-up #155

Here is weekly Round-up #155! It's been a busy week at VALIDATE: we highlighted some of our fantastic members to mark the International Day of Women and Girls in Science; we have a new upcoming VALIDATE Seminar from Dr Sheila Keating at GigaGen, one of our industry partners, as well as two upcoming workshops for our ECRs; and we include below the usual collection of jobs, funding and publication relevant to our members. Enjoy!

Capturing and recreating recombinant polycloncal antibodies for passive immunization to treat difficult to treat infections - A VALIDATE Seminar with Dr Sheila Keating from GigaGen - 4pm GMT, 11 March 2021 (online)

In a recent publication in Nature Biotechnology, Dr Sheila Keating and her team have demonstrated the technology to capture entire immune repertoires from infected or vaccinated individuals, to be used to treat difficult to treat infections - and have demonstrated this work with COVID and respiratory bacterial infections. In this talk, Sheila will describe the technology and will map out potential pathways for developing passive immune therapeutics that will not only treat but also help to prime immune responses to protect against future infections. Register to join this seminar today.

Online ECR 2021 Workshop Series

We have two upcoming online workshops for Early Career Researchers that will cover skills invaluable for progression in your research career:

Grant Writing - 24 February 2021; 1300 GMT

Prof Helen McShane and Sam Vermaak will be discussing research grant writing, their experiences both in applying for grants and reviewing grant applications, and answering any questions on this topic that VALIDATE ECRs may have.

Do let us know ahead of the workshop what specific subjects and questions you'd love us to discuss via the ECR Channel of the VALIDATE Hub so that we can include them.

Research Project & Grant Management for Researchers - 17 March 2021; 1300 GMT

Sam Vermaak, who is an experienced research project manager, will be taking you through her tips to plan and run a successful research project and to manage your research grants - the main point being to keep a defined project running efficiently, so that it finishes on time and on budget, and achieves its original aims.

We need your help - 100 Facts about TB and BCG

As part of our upcoming BCG100 Campaign, to celebrate the centenary of the first use of the BCG vaccine, VALIDATE will be producing an online public engagement campaign based around 100 interesting facts about the BCG vaccine and TB. We'd love to hear your interesting facts, so if you would like to contribute to the 100 Facts please join the discussion with Blakeley on the Collaboration Channel of the VALIDATE Hub.

Funding:

Wellcome International Training Fellowships - Offers nationals of low- and middle-income countries the opportunity to receive training at postgraduate or postdoctoral level – deadline 16 March 2021
Biomedical Catalyst: Developmental Pathway Funding Scheme (DPFS) outline - Supporting the pre-clinical development and early clinical testing of novel therapeutics, devices and diagnostics, including “re-purposing” of existing therapies – deadline 24 March 2021
Wellcome Sir Henry Dale Fellowships - Provides support for postdoctoral researchers who aim to become independent scientists leading their own groups – deadline 29 March 2021
Wellcome Research Enrichment – Diversity and Inclusion - For Wellcome grantholders to identify and tackle barriers to diversity and inclusion in their work – deadline 9 April 2021
BBSRC Standard Research Grant - For researchers at eligible organisations that include higher education institutions, research council institutes and approved independent research organisations - deadline 28 April 2021

Don't forget that our VALIDATE Training Grant call for Associate members closes tomorrow - find out more here.

And you can find all other funding opportunities on our external funding page.

Training Opportunities and Events:

Iron Controls Immunity BSI Webinar, Online, 15:00-15:45, 25 February 2021
LSHTM World TB Day Symposium, Online, 08:45-14:05, 24 March 2021

More opportunities and events can be found on our Training and Events pages.

Job Opportunities:

Lecturer in Immunology, Blizzard Institute, Queen Mary University of London, UK, deadline 11 March 2021

There are many more relevant career opportunities on our jobs page.

Publications:

Can what we have learnt about BCG vaccination in the last 20 years help us to design a better tuberculosis vaccine?, VALIDATE members Hazel Dockrell & Egle Butkeviciute, in Vaccine
Poor correlation between BCG vaccination-induced T cell responses and protection against tuberculosis, Mittrücker HW et al, in PNAS
Paratuberculosis vaccination specific and non-specific effects on cattle lifespan, Juste RA, in Vaccine
Mycobacterium bovis infection in free-ranging african elephants, VALIDATE member Michele Miller et al including member Wynand Goosen, in Emerging Infectious Diseases

Check out our Publications Page for members' publications and email validate@ndm.ox.ac.uk if you have a paper you would like to add.

Highlights on Twitter this week:

Maria Elena Bottazzi was the first to share one of our International Day of Women and Girls in Science Tweets and on the day itself we tweeted infographics celebrating the careers and research of VALIDATE members Siobhán McClean, Maria Elena Bottazzi, Nassira Belmessabih, Sumaya Mohayideen, Walderez Dutra, Rita Ziem Ekekpi and Dragomira Majhen. These were retweeted by many on Twitter in English, Spanish and Portuguese. BactiVac shared details of our training grant call, VALIDATE Network Director Helen Fletcher appeared on a IWGS video for the Newton Fund, we shared our video of the recent VALIDATE for Schools event, and VALIDATE member Dr Alfredo Torres shared the beautiful cover of the Journal of Bacteriology featuring an image of Burkholderia. All this and much more @NetworkVALIDATE.

Published: 17 February 2021