Inge Schreurs received NRS Travel Grant
Joint BSI & NVVI Congress 2016
ACC, Liverpool, UK, 6-9 December 2016
The coming together of the British Society for Immunology (BSI) and Dutch Society for Immunology (NVVI) was a special occasion. The BSI was celebrating its 60th anniversary. The goal of the conference was to bring together the Dutch and British immunology professionals. Next to the obvious content of the conference there was also time for more social and political topics including non-research careers, a balance between work and personal life and BREXIT. I was given the opportunity to present my work in a poster presentation. And my main goal was to find other researchers to discuss monocyte and macrophage subsets in disease.
The first day was scheduled for the PhD and postdoc bright sparks. Followed by career talks and workshops. John Tregoning from the UK deserves praise; his talk on career paths was inspiring and incredibly funny. The second, third and fourth day were filled with plenary and parallel sessions with a very wide variety of topics. The topics included; vaccinations, T cells, lung immunology, immunology and metabolism, from pathology to therapy, innate sensing, macrophages, antibodies, granulocytes, big data and aging immunity. Personally I enjoyed David Dockrell’s talk on alveolar macrophages and Elinor Shuttleworth’s talk on human peripheral blood monocytes and intestinal macrophage populations activating TGFbeta expression the most. Next to very inspiring talks, I had the opportunity to talk to other PhD students from UMC Groningen and Imperial College London about monocyte subsets in disease during the poster sessions. I hope to implement the things I have learned into our own research.
Being surrounded by many distinguished researchers and motivated PhD students, all with a passion for immunology, made me very enthusiastic. It its lovely to experience how a conference like this can lift your spirit and gets you motivated and hyped to get back to work again. The ACC in Liverpool was a great and impressive location. Everything was very well organised. I would greatly recommend joint conferences like this. I am particularly looking forward to the 5th European Congress of Immunology in Amsterdam 2018.
And last but definitely not least; I would like to gratefully acknowledge the NRS for their financial support. Which made it possible for me to attend this conference. Thank you very much for the opportunity.
With kind regards,
Inge Schreurs, St. Antonius Hospital
