The NUS-Cambridge Joint Symposium 2014 on Infection and Immunity was hosted by the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine on 31 October 2014. The third annual joint research meeting was opened by Mr Tom Crawley, Senior Science and Innovation Officer, British High Commission, at the NUS Centre for Life Sciences (CeLS) Auditorium and attracted a total of 137 like-minded researchers and students.
Representatives from NUS Medicine included Associate Professor Yeoh Khay Guan, Associate Professor Thomas Dick, Associate Professor Fu Xin-Yuan, Professor Nicholas Gascoigne, Associate Professor Paul MacAry and Professor Paul Tambyah. They were joined by Professor Kenneth Smith, Professor Patrick Maxwell, Professor Yorgo Modis, Professor Sharon Peacock and Professor Lalita Ramakrishnan from the Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge.
In addition to providing a platform for the exchanging and updating of research ideas, this symposium also aims to cultivate cooperation between the researchers and students from the two schools involved.
“The University of Cambridge is consistently ranked among the top universities in the world in Medicine and Life Sciences. Both our Schools share a long and rich history together, indeed, several of Singapore’s medical leadership are Cambridge alumni and many Singapore doctors have benefited from medical training in Cambridge. And of course we also share a common mission in academic medicine, in improving our knowledge and understanding in life sciences, with the ultimate aim of improving people’s health.”
Topics covered by speakers from both schools included the control of signal pathways in immunity, the use of Zebrafish as predictive models for human development and disease, insights into Mycobacterium tuberculosis, current microbial genomics and clinical diagnostics as well as updates on developments in the drug engineering of drugs to combat infections. 14 research students were also chosen to showcase their research in the form of poster presentations and discussions based on their submitted abstracts.
The next NUS-Cambridge Joint Symposium will be hosted by NUS again in the last quarter of 2015.
For more information, you can visit their website here.
Dean of NUS Medicine, A/Prof Yeoh Khay Guan, presenting a token of appreciation to Head of the School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge, Prof Patrick Maxwell.
Prof Nicholas Gascoigne, Head of the Department of Microbiology, NUS, presenting his findings on the Control of Signal Transduction in Developing Thymocytes and Regulatory T Cells by Themis and PKC Theta.
(From left) Prof Lalita Ramakrishnan, A/Prof Eugene Liu, Prof Yorgo Modis, A/Prof Paul MacAry, A/Prof Thomas Dick, Prof Sharon Peacock and Prof Kenneth Smith.