Mastering Immunity 2023: Discussion Panel 2

Prof. Koen Venken has a longstanding interest in T cell biology with a primary focus on translational research. He completed his PhD at the Biomedical Research Institute of the University of Hasselt (Belgium) and Maastricht (The Netherlands), looking into the role of human Tregs in multiple sclerosis. For his post-doctoral training he moved to the University of Ghent (Belgium), becoming acquainted with human and experimental research in the field of Rheumatology. For this he received grant support from the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) and VLAIO (Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship). Dr. Venken is currently a senior Staff Scientist at the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB)- Center for Inflammation Research and appointed as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of Ghent University. His current research focuses on the role of innate-like and regulatory T cells in the area of chronic inflammatory diseases, specifically joint and mucosal tissue inflammation.

Dr. Joshua Blight has a PhD in Vaccinology and Infectious Diseases from the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford where he developed computational approaches to design vaccines against various infectious diseases. Some of these included chikungunya and human papilloma virus (HPV) which are currently in human clinical trials. Following this he worked as a postdoctoral research associate at Imperial College London, developing new ways to create malaria vaccines. Currently he is co-founder and CEO of Baseimmune, developing mutation-proof vaccines through AI.

Noor Zayanah Hamis is currently a Research Assistant at the Viral Research and Experimental Medicine Centre (ViREMiCS) in Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore. She recently completed her Master’s by Research at the University of Bristol under the supervision of Assoc Prof Dr Laura Rivino, where she studied the responding T cells in acute dengue infection. Her research interests include T cell responses in flavivirus infections and early phase vaccine clinical trials.

Georgia Stavrakis is currently a PhD candidate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health studying in the department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology. She received her undergraduate degree in Microbiology and Immunology from McGill University in Montreal, Qc.