Quo vadis? – The professional life of female scientists in the past, present and future

Susanne shares her impressions about the iScientist conference, where scientist exchange ideas about inequality, gender sensitization, workload, and more.
Susanne shares her impressions about the iScientist conference, where scientist exchange ideas about inequality, gender sensitization, workload, and more.
Immunology is such an exciting field – in recent years, tons of new developments and theories have sprung up like mushrooms after rain. Interestingly, just as there are different trends in the fashion world, scientific research also has different hotspots every year. Various annual international scientific conferences certainly provide the stage for current research trends in Immunology. One of the high-level meetings is the European … Continue reading Interested in Immune regulation, big data modelling, and networking?
My first encounter with the workshop series “Antigen Processing and Presentation” (APP) is quite a long time ago. It started more or less by accident. While I was looking around on the EMBO homepage for some financial support for the next conference participation, I found an immunological workshop named “Antigen Processing and Presentation” which was exactly what my research is about. This workshop series had … Continue reading A workshop series traveling around the world
Did you ever wonder how a scientific conference or summer school is organized? Who selects the speakers and more importantly, who decides which abstracts are selected for a presentation? And what are the criteria for the poster awards? Well, during my visit to the ENII (European Network of Immunology Institutes) Summer school of Immunology in Sardinia a few weeks ago, I became curious and decided … Continue reading How to organize a summer school: Answers from the experts
Everything started with the attendance of the Minerva meeting 2017 in Israel – interesting talks, interesting people, interesting culture to discover. After the end of the meeting we decided to spend some more days in Israel and discover something completely different. You have probably thought that people travel to Israel – despite attending a meeting – due to religious motivations or to eat falafel? Ever … Continue reading Negev desert: stark beauty
It was 4:00 in the morning and my alarm started to ring. I quickly woke up and looked at the watch, “Is it really 4 o’clock?” But no, my mobile hadn’t gone haywire… Alas! I stood up and got ready; I had to catch a flight at 7:15. I made it to the airport in time, where I met my colleague Stella. That’s how our … Continue reading Alzheimer’s Disease Congress – Quality rather than quantity….
When I was first asked to write a blog article, I thought ok: I could write about the scientific part of the congress, which I attended in Georgia. But given the fact that I was not only impressed by scientific input but also other facts in Georgia, I decided to somehow make a mixture and write about both aspects and focus on how the cultural … Continue reading A short story about visiting land of wonders, Georgia, as a PhD student
When I was asked to write a little report about the experiences I had made at the International Congress of Immunology I didn’t just want to write one of these travel reports containing the typical pictures of museums and skyscrapers. Instead, I want to tell you about the scientific way of travelling. During my bachelor studies at the University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg I already … Continue reading Travelling in the name of science
In the recent article by Christine Schuy, you have already heard that studying microglia, the brain resident immune cells, is very interdisciplinary. It can therefore be challenging to find conferences that exactly fit this topic, especially if one is looking for an even narrower topic: the role of microglia in Alzheimer’s disease. The Alzheimer’s Association International Conference 2016 in Toronto is the major conference on … Continue reading The Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Toronto – putting own research in a broader context
For a scientist, one of the most exciting things to happen is when basic principles established in laboratory models lead to new therapeutic approaches for humans. Most recently, the understanding of several checkpoints in T cell self-tolerance, infection and transplantation led to the development of immune checkpoint blockade to treat cancer. The use of drugs blocking specific checkpoints, such as Programmed Death 1 (PD-1) and … Continue reading Immune Checkpoint Blockade: A milestone on the way to cure cancer