Over the past two weeks, members of the Hoffmann research lab have welcomed Dr. Moses Egesa for two weeks of intensive training. Dr. Egesa is a research fellow with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), a Senior Research Officer at the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) and a Senior Scientist at both…
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…
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…
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…
Functional Genomics Workshop in Brazil
During the last two weeks of September, BCHC member Prof Gabriel Rinaldi ran a workshop with colleagues in Brazil. The international online course aimed at presenting different functional genomic methodologies in parasites and their vectors, including interference RNA, CRISPR CAS knock-in and knock-out. The course focused on single-cell sequencing from the preparation to data analysis.…