The following people are invited as speakers or judges
Invited speakers
Austen Anne Sitko
Ph.D. student
Department of Nueroscience, Columbia University, USA
Mason lab.
I'm a fourth-year graduate student in neuroscience at Columbia University
in New York City studying the development of neural circuits.
I love science and microscopy as much as I love art and exploring new places.
Armelle Bohineust
Ph.D. student
Centre de Recherche, Pavillon Pasteur, Institut Curie, Paris, France
I'm a PhD student in the group of Claire Hivroz at the Curie Institute in Paris.
In the group we are mostly interesting in the crosstalk between T cells and dendritic cells,
essential for the establishment of an adaptive immune response against pathogens or tumor cells.
Our aim is to better characterize the different steps controlling T cell activation and to
describe the mechanisms regulating the secretion of soluble factors involved in anti-tumor cell
responses.
Ashley Acevedo
Ph.D. student
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of California, San Francisco, USA
Andino lab.
My name is Ashley Acevedo and I live in San Francisco, California.
I am a 6th year graduate student in Raul Andino's lab at the University
of California, San Francisco.
The primary focus of my projects are the consequences of genetic
diversity on pathogenesis of RNA viruses, most specifically poliovirus.
In my free time, which, for the record, is scarce, I swim on an
intramural swimming team and play golf with my husband.
I also enjoy watching movies and traveling.
This will be my first trip to Japan, so I'm very excited to experience
Japanese culture, food and architecture!
Dr. Chih-Jung Hsu
Postdoctoral Fellow
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institute of Health, USA
I am interested in exploring the spatial association between HIV-1
viral proteins and TCR signaling components at the synaptic interface
using fluorescence microscopy
Eitan Hoch
Ph.D. student
Department of Physiology and Cell Biology, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Sekler lab.
I Love science and I love traveling the world.
Great opportunity to do both in Kyoto!
Dr. Haruhisa Okawa
Postdoctoral fellow
Department of Biological Structure, University of Washington, USA
My name is Robert DiMario. I am a graduate student at Louisiana State University.
My project involves characterizing the physiological roles of carbonic anhydrases
in higher plants.
Dr. Shari Gordon
Postdoctoral Fellow
Animal Models and Retroviral Vaccines Section, National Institute of Health, USA
Franchini lab.
My passion for translational research began in graduate school in the
laboratory of Dr.Guido Silvestri at Emory University.
My graduate studies focused on viral pathogeneses and inflammation in the
context of HIV and SIV infections.
My transition from graduate school to postdoctoral research found me
contemplating disease prevention, and I joined the laboratory of
Dr. Genoveffa Franchini in the Vaccine Branch of the National Cancer
Institute in order to study vaccines.
My postdoctoral research began evaluating the safety of smallpox vaccines
and testing vaccine candidates for HIV.
I have continued working on HIV vaccines, comparing novel mucosal vaccine
vectors such as the Human Papilloma Virus Pseudovirions to systemic
vectors such as the canarypox vector ALVAC.
In 2009 the results of the first successful HIV vaccine clinical trial
was released. The RV144 Thai Trial, showed a modest but significant
efficacy and vaccinated individuals with ALVAC-HIV in combination with
gp120 protein. Our lab has modeled this vaccine in macaques using
ALVAC-SIV/gp120, and demonstrated that this regimen has similar
immunogenicity in macaques and also significantly reduces the rate of SIV
acquisition. My current work compares the immunogenicity and efficacy of
HIV vaccine candidates in the macaque model, with a goal of elucidating
vaccine induced correlates of protection, and finding ways of improving
vaccine efficacy.
*All invited speakers will judge Short-Talk session as well.
Invited judges
Dr. Knut Woltjen
Assistant Prof.
Department of Reprogramming Science, Center for
iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA), Kyoto University
