Old Members’ Trust Graduate Conference and Academic Travel Fund Report – Zixi Yin

I attended the 17th Congress of the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS 2019) in Beijing, China. It’s the largest conference on immunological research in the world, which is held every 4 years. For this year, it lasted for 5 days, from 19 to 23 October, and more than 6500 delegates from all over the world participated in the event. The conference covered a wide range of topics in immunological research, including autoimmune disease, immunometabolism and immunity to viruses. Three Nobel Prize winners were invited as keynote speakers — Peter Doherty, Jules Hoffmann and Tasuku Honjo, who were awarded in 1996, 2011 and 2018 respectively. Besides keynote speakers, over 300 academics had given talks during the conference. It was a great chance to learn the latest scientific advances, from which I strongly felt that immunologists are playing a more and more important role in improving global health.

I presented a poster “IFITM3 rs12252 genotype is associated with IFITM3 expression levels and immune responses” at the conference. I have been working on the function of IFITM3, an Interferon-induced transmembrane protein, in Influenza virus restriction during the first year of my DPhil study. Several people came to my poster and asked questions. I really enjoyed discussing with expert researchers about my project and I did get invaluable feedback and inspiring ideas from them. I also made friends with students from other universities and we had lovely chats about our projects, experience in the lab, future plans and so on.

I would like to thank the Old Member’s Trust for funding me to attend this conference. The award was used to cover the conference registration fee and abstract submission fee.  Attending this conference helped me increase my knowledge about my field, get helpful ideas from others’ talks and keep up with the latest research. It was also a unique opportunity for me to network with researchers of similar interests across the world and even develop future co-operation.

Find out more about the range of travel grants and scholarships available to assist Univ students on our Travel Grants page or read further travel reports.

Published: 13 January 2020

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