Lecture Series 2018 'Infection & Immunity'

The Department of Infection and Immunity at the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH) applies for the FNR-RESCOM to continue with the fifth edition of it’s well recognized lecture series in ’Infection & Immunity'.As in the previous years we aim to attract world leading scientists to Luxembourg. This has proven to be very productive in the past and the RESCOM lecture series in ‘Infection & Immunity’ is very efficient in increasing the international recognition of the LIH and Luxembourg’s scientific environment in general.In 2018 we plan to have 12 lectures from January 2018 to December 2018. The lectures will be given by outstanding scientists in the field and are strategically tailored to fit focus topics of the Department of Infection and Immunity (DII) at the LIH. The lectures are open for all scientist and will be publically announced by the LIH, the University of Luxembourg and the Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg (CHL). Lectures will be held on Thursday at 11am, but might be rescheduled depending on the constraints of the invited speakers. After an approx. 45min talk we will have 20min for discussions. Afterwards we will schedule a student’s seminar, which is open to all students within Luxembourg and abroad. The workshop is a unique opportunity for students at different levels to get in contact with high ranking international scientists. For most of the students this is their first contact with the international scientific community, which is important to support their further development. Intentionally the student’s workshop is quite informal and organized as a joined lunch, which we have named ‘Meet & Eat’. This atmosphere has proven to foster the communication between invited speakers and the students during this appr. 2hours lasting event.Currently the lecture series in ‘Infection and Immunity 2017’ is still running. Seven out of twelve renowned speakers have already visited our institute. Special highlights were the lectures of Prof. Peter H. Krammer from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, Germany and of Prof. Hergen Spitz from the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam, Netherlands, - both belong to the most influential scientists in modern immunology,. The reception of our program, the LIH and Luxembourg’s research environment, has so far been excellent and all invited speakers acknowledged the quality of our program. As a result of these intense interactions several of LIH-DII’s scientists themselves got invited to the international institutes of our guests (Dr. Mahesh Desai, Prof. Dirk Brenner, Prof. Markus Ollert) and we could win three of our former invited speakers as members of our Scientific Advisory Board for our graduate school program ‘NEXTIMMUNE’ (Prof. Tak W. Mak, Prof. Cezmi Aktis, Prof. Michael Meyer-Hermann).Given the high resonance and outstanding feedback of our invited speakers, our students and scientists we are aiming to renew the lecture series in ‘Infection and Immunity’ for 2018. We further aim to increase our and the international recognition of Luxembourg’s research environment.