Dr Connie Jackaman, Jeanne Edmands, Dr Mark Agostino, Lelinh Duong, A/Prof. Delia Nelson and Prof. Deirdre Coombe.
The Australasian Society for Immunology’s (ASI) Annual Scientific Meeting returned to Perth for the first time in eight years this December.
The annual meeting of this broad-based society focused on supporting the discipline of immunology, is rotated around Australia and New Zealand. The meeting was last held in Western Australia in 2010.
For the past three years, staff and students from the Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute (CHIRI) and Curtin’s School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences have been heavily involved in organising the national meeting – Dr Connie Jackaman as the meeting’s Chair, as well as Jeanne Edmands, Dr Mark Agostino, A/Prof Delia Nelson and student representative Lelinh Duong.
This year, approximately 420 delegates attended the meeting across five days. Highlights of the meeting included a dynamic scientific program filled with outstanding international and national speakers, as well as the vibrant conference dinner sponsored by CHIRI.
Prof. Deirdre Coombe introduced CHIRI at the conference dinner with the highly-anticipated annual limerick competition. Connie and A/Prof. Delia Nelson chaired sessions on “Activation and Differentiation” and “Early Life and Ageing” respectively, while Connie’s PhD student Lelinh Duong gave two presentations, one in the BD Science Communication session titled “Immune cells called macrophages increase in tumours of elderly hosts” and the second in the ageing session titled “Ageing leads to increased suppressive tumour-associated macrophages with hyperactivated Akt signalling”.
Our CHIRI researchers have been receiving fantastic feedback about the conference and their involvement from international and national delegates. They’re looking forward to the meeting’s return to Perth, hopefully in the not too distant future.
Photos and commentary on the meeting are on Twitter, search for #ASI2018WA.
Many ASI members have been at the forefront of advancing biological and medical research worldwide. You can find out more about ASI on its website.
