Building on the success of last year’s Inaugural Meeting, the 2nd Annual Network Meeting was held on 20 & 21 March 2019 and not only gave those attending opportunities to broaden connections within our membership, but also provided an excellent forum for exchanging ideas and furthering research possibilities.
Ahead of our 2nd Annual Network Meeting, we hosted our first Grant Writing Workshop for early career researchers on Tuesday 19 March 2019. The Workshop was delivered by experienced and enthusiastic facilitators from Scriptoria. Attendees representing 12 different countries had the benefit of taking part in this Workshop, all of whom can’t now wait to start putting their new skills into practice. The programme focused on developing scientific writing skills to produce high quality grant proposals. Attendees were thoroughly engaged throughout this interactive Workshop and the feedback provided clearly demonstrates that the day was enriched with the practical exercises and study materials, all of which left participants well prepared to apply the tools learnt during the workshop.
We were delighted to welcome 158 of our members to the BactiVac 2nd Annual Network Meeting in Birmingham, UK, with representation from 25 countries - thus ensuring it was certainly a global affair. The two-day meeting brought together scientists, academics, industrial partners and policymakers from around the world, all with the shared vision to develop and implement bacterial vaccines to tackle global challenges. The programme offered talks from internationally renowned speakers, covering issues such as the problem of chronic underfunding of global health bacterial vaccine research & development and how traditional expensive vaccine development can be overcome with a highlight on the value of vaccines and impact on human life expectancy and how new technologies are enabling us to overcome challenges. Attendees were treated to an eye-opening presentation on the challenges that face SMEs in vaccine development.
The Network was pleased to see the recipients of our travel bursary awards having the opportunity to take part in the meeting and add the LMIC perspective which is invaluable to us all when working in partnership to address the global challenges in bacterial vaccinology.
Over the two days, members were able to network and meet many new potential collaborators and friends. The opportunities offered throughout the meeting to ensure that attendees felt able to interact at all levels, which is something of great importance to BactiVac, with the proverb “If you want to go quickly travel alone, if you want to go far go together” being uppermost in all our minds.
For all queries, please contact the BactiVac Administration Team: bactivac@contacts.bham.ac.uk