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yEFIS at ECI 2024

yEFIS symposium - Researcher Reflections: Inspiring Paths in Academia

Monday 2nd September, 12:50 - 14:05 (Liffey B)
ECI - career

Join us for this yEFIS lunch symposium where 8 invited Principal Investigators will share their journeys in academia, highlighting key lessons and strategies that led to their success. Following the talks, enjoy an informal exchange event where you can connect directly with the speakers, diving deeper into the topics that resonated with you. This is a unique opportunity to gain insights, ask questions, and network in a relaxed setting—perfect for anyone looking to advance their academic career.​

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Chairs: Dr Annika Hausmann & Dr Ioana Sandu

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Dr Rami Bechara

Université Paris-Saclay, France

Dr Rami Bechara is an Assistant Professor of Immunology at INSERM/Paris-Saclay University, School of Medicine, Paris, France. With a deep interest in RNA methylation, his research has focused on immune-mediated pathologies since his PhD. Rami is an expert in signaling pathways and post-transcriptional regulation, with a particular emphasis on inflammation. Currently, he leads research on the role of RNA methylation in Sjögren’s disease, an autoimmune disorder that affects exocrine glands and leads to systemic complications. His work aims to uncover new signaling pathways and molecular mechanisms that regulate inflammatory responses.

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Prof. Liv Eidsmo

Karolinska Institute, Sweden

Prof. Eidsmo is the Chair of Dermatology and Venereology at Karolinska Institute and a Consultant Dermatologist at Karolinska University Hospital since 2024. She graduated medical school in 1999 and defended her PhD in Immunobiology at Karolinska Institutet in 2006. Following a postdoc (2007-2009) in Frank Carbone’s laboratory at Melbourne University, she returned to Sweden to start up her own lab at the Center for Molecular Medicine (CMM) at Karolinska Institutet in parallel to clinical training in dermatology at Karolinska University Hospital. She was a Professor of Translational Skin Immunology and the Executive Director of the LEO Foundation Skin Immunology Research Center at the University of Copenhagen (2021-2024). Her work has been distinguished with numerous awards, including the Ellis and Ivar Janzon’s Prize, The Swedish Society of Medicine (2017), Marcus and Marianne Wallenberg Clinical Research Fellow (2016) and the Ragnar Söderberg Fellowship (2014). Her lab focuses on how T cells residing in the skin drive local recurrence of diseases such as psoriasis and vitiligo.

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Prof. Adrian Liston

University of Cambridge, UK

Prof. Adrian Liston is Professor of Pathology at the Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge, Honorary Group Leader at the Babraham Institute, Equalities Fellow and Director of Studies at St Catharine's College, and Editor-in-Chief of Immunology & Cell Biology. Liston runs a biomedical research laboratory together with Dr James Dooley, Principal Research Associate. The Liston-Dooley laboratory currently works on understanding the regulation of immune responses in the tissues, in particular the brain and lung. The laboratory has extensive experience in the fields of neuroimmunology, autoimmune genetics, diabetes, primary immunodeficiencies, systems immunology, the thymus and regulatory T cells.

Beyond his research interests, Liston writes extensively about science careers: how early career scientists can navigate the academic career pathway and succeed in starting their own lab, how to implement a positive research culture, what should be done to make scientific careers more equitable, and experiences as a scientist-parent. Liston is an advocate for harnessing your lived experience in your public engagement, represented through his publication of the illustrated books for young children "All about Coronavirus", "Battle Robots of the Blood" and "Maya's Marvellous Medicine", and for high school students the graphic novel "Becoming a Scientist" and the online educational tool VirusFighter. Liston coordinated the "Sensory Science" program to generate and present sci-art for the blind and low vision community in Cambridge.

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Dr Natalia Muñoz-Wolf

Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

Dr Natalia Muñoz-Wolf is a Research Assistant Professor and leader of the Translational Respiratory Immunology Lab (https://www.respiratoryimmunology.com) at the School of Medicine, Trinity College Dublin. Funded by the prestigious Emerging Investigator Award by the Health Research Board Ireland, she became an independent investigator in 2019. Her current research focuses on studying chronic and infectious respiratory diseases including COPD and pneumonia. By harnessing the unique properties of gut microbial-derived metabolites, her group aims to modulate the lungs' immune system to improve protection against respiratory infections and design novel ways of treating chronic respiratory diseases.

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Dr Shruti Naik

Icahn School of Medicine, Mt. Sinai, USA

Dr Shruti Naik, Ph.D., is an international leader in immunology and tissue stem cell biology. She is an Associate Professor in Immunology and Dermatology and the Director of the Tissue Repair Program at Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai. Dr Naik’s research uses advanced technologies to study how immune cells communicate with tissues, aiming to develop therapies that stop inflammatory damage and rejuvenate organs at the cellular and molecular levels. She has made groundbreaking discoveries on the microbiota's role in immunity, epigenetic memory in stem cells, and the mechanisms of immune-tissue interactions. A strong advocate for diversity in science, Dr Naik has received numerous accolades, including the Regeneron Award for Creative Innovation, L’Oréal For Women in Science Award, Damon Runyon Dale F. Frey Award for Breakthrough Scientist, Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists, Takeda Innovators in Science Award, Pew-Stewart Scholar, NIH Directors Innovator Award DP2, Packard Fellow, Burrows Welcome PATH Award, and is a NYSCF Robertson Stem Cell Investigator.

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Dr Charlotte Scott

Center for Inflammation Research, Belgium

Charlotte did her undergraduate studies in Industrial Biochemistry at the University of Limerick in Ireland, it was here she fell in love with Immunology and decided to pursue a PhD. For this, in 2009 with the help of a Wellcome Trust PhD grant, she moved to the University of Glasgow in Scotland where under the guidance of Prof. Allan Mowat, she studied the different subsets of dendritic cells in the intestine. After completing her PhD in 2014, she moved to Belgium to the lab of Martin Guilliams for a postdoc investigating the ontogeny of tissue resident macrophages in the liver. This stage of her career was funded again by the Wellcome Trust and a Marie Curie IEF. Having identified that liver macrophages, called KCs were highly enriched for genes associated with lipid metabolism, in 2019, with the help of an ERC StG, she started her own research group investigating these cells in the context of metabolic dysfunction associated steatotic liver disease. Her lab, which now consists of 18 researchers, is currently focussed on understanding the functional heterogeneity of myeloid cells (DCs and macrophages) in tissue injury and inflammation.

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Dr Matteo Villa

Medical University of Graz, Austria

Dr Villa got his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Milan, Italy and then travelled a little bit around Europe to get a few different lab experiences. Matteo started his PhD in 2011, at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research in London, UK and then his Postdoc in 2016, at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg, Germany.

Matteo has been an independent researcher since Feb 2023 at the Medical University of Graz, Austria and works on human immunology in peripheral tissues.

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Dr Eduardo Villablanca

Karolinska Institute, Sweden

Dr Villablanca was trained as a developmental biologist, with expertise in cell migration using zebrafish as an in vivo model. As a doctoral student in the molecular medicine program at San Raffaele University in Milan, Italy, Dr Villablanca began his training as an immunologist. Pursuing his interest in intestinal leukocyte trafficking, he joined the Rodrigo Mora’s lab at Harvard Medical School (Boston, USA) as postdoctoral trainee in mucosal immunology. After four years, he was promoted Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. In his new role, he joined Dr Xavier’s lab to study the function of Inflammatory Bowel diseases (IBD) risk genes in the context of intestinal immune homeostasis.

By the end of 2014, Dr Villablanca was recruited to establish his own laboratory at the division of immunology and allergy, Karolinska Institute, Sweden. Today, his lab combines studies in developmental biology and immunology, with a final focus on the mechanisms whereby intestinal homeostasis is maintained and how failure of these mechanisms may lead to disease.

Check the Villablanca lab webpage for further information https://villablancalab.com/ or take a look at to his research video summary at https://youtu.be/eBeMm1zHnVM

The Future of Leadership in Academia / Challenges for Leadership in Academia

Tuesday 3rd September, 10:30 - 11:45 (Auditorium)
ECI - Leadership

Co-organized with the EFIS Gender and Diversity Task Force.

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yEFIS symposium:
Emerging Young European Scientists

Wednesday 4th September, 14:25 - 15:40 (Auditorium)
ECI - yEFIS session
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