BCHC News – Barrett Centre for Helminth Control

DLS Festival of Research 2024

On Friday 13th September, the Department of Life Sciences at Aberystwyth University held the second DLS Festival of Research. After last years success, staff and students were pleased to welcome back the event. This year, there were posters and presentations from across the research groups with a strong ECR presence. Talks included: Dr. Josephine Forde-Thomas “Leveraging…

BCHC members attend The Hydra Helminth Conference 2024

This September, BCHC members Prof. Karl Hoffmann and Dr. Jo Forde-Thomas attended The Hydra Helminth Conference in Greece. This Conference focuses on Helminths and helps to drive forward this fast-moving field of parasitology. The keynote speaker this year was Prof. Alex Loukas from James Cook University, Australia. Prof. Karl Hoffmann gave his talk on ‘Development…

FoodBiosystems DTP Summer School 2024

In July this year FoodBioSystems DTP held a Summer School at University of Reading. This event gave students a chance to network, share research and develop new transferable skills at the workshops. Everyone had an opportunity to present their ongoing research in a friendly constructive atmosphere. Corey Steele presented her poster on ‘Ruminating over Host-Parasite…

BCHC collaborates with TULIP Graduate School, Perpignan

This month, Professor Karl Hoffmann participated in the ‘Functional Biology and Ecology’ Master’s Degree in Perpignan, France. There, as part of the TULIP Graduate School, Prof. Hoffmann delivered a lecture to students on neglected tropical diseases and drug discovery. He also had the opportunity to meet with staff conducting research on schistosome/host interactions and how…

Pursing the next phases of exciting work

In April, members from the BCHC visited collaborators within the University of Dundee’s Drug Discovery Unit and the School of Life Sciences to discuss our annual progress on schistosome drug discovery. This work, funded by the Wellcome Trust, has contributed to new methods for characterising how schistosomes respond to drugs and led to the identification…

British Society for Parasitology Spring Meeting 2024

The University of Liverpool hosted this year’s British Society for Parasitology (BSP) Spring Meeting in April. The event brought together the parasitologists from around the world to discuss their latest research. During the four day meeting, Prof. Jo Hamilton the President of BSP welcomed the delegates and several other BCHC members were involved in presenting…

British Science Week 2024

Aberystwyth University recently welcomed hundreds of school children from the local area to celebrate British Science Week. This annual event is a celebration of science, technology, engineering and Maths (STEM), this year’s theme was Time. Several university departments were involved including BCHC members, running stands related to STEM subjects. The interactive activities encouraged the pupils…

The Queen awards BCHC members

This week, several members of BCHC attended a ceremony in Buckingham Palace to receive the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for pioneering work in parasitology. Queen Camilla presented the award and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also praised the prize winners. The prestigious award recognises the work of scientists in the Department of Life Sciences here at Aberystwyth…

BCHC encourages next generation of parasitologists

This month, members of BCHC including Prof Karl Hoffmann, Dr Gabriel Rinaldi, Dr Jo Forde-Thomas and PhD student Sarah Davey attended a Careers event at Ysgol Penglais, Aberystwyth. The event was held for Year 8 students where BCHC members showed and discussed some of the work carried out at Aberystwyth University and hopefully inspired the…

Exciting new international partnership for BCHC members

Director of BCHC Prof. Karl Hoffmann has helped to establish a new international partnership; this collaboration involves several institutes around the world and aims to develop a vaccine for parasite diseases caused by helminths. On the path to discover vaccines against hookworms and schistosomes researchers will explore new ways of identifying molecular targets and…