Public engagement and outreach
ESRs will carry out activities to create public awareness of the research work performed within the QuanTII network, as well as the importance of immunology research in general. The engagement will also aim to create awareness within the general public of the role and importance of quantitative (mathematical, statistical and computational) contributions to medical science, and to promote exciting multidisciplinary and intersectoral research career possibilities.
31st Population Approach Group in Europe (PAGE) conference (2023), A Coruna, Spain
27-30 June 2023
Van Thuy Truong (ESR 14) presented a poster entitled "Combining PKPD models with agent-based modelling and reinforcement learning/artificial intelligence algorithm to optimize cancer treatment". This is work with GD Lythe, P Vicini, JW Yates, and VF Dubois, and the conference abstract is available for more information.
International Conference on Systems Biology of Human Disease, Berlin
19-21 June 2023
Sarah Benedetto (ESR 1) gave a poster presentation on "Evolutionary Dynamics of Oligodedrogliomas" during the second poster session at this SBHD conference.
EACR 2023 Congress, Turin
12-15 June 2023
Noor Kherreh (ESR 9) presented her work on "Quantification of immunoediting signal using HLA-I genotype and mutational signatures" at the Tumour Immunology poster session.
17th ENII EFIS EJI Summer School on Advanced Immunology, Alghero, Sardinia
17 - 24 May 2023
The two ESRs from UMC Utrecht each gave a poster presentation at this summer school:
- Elena de Dios Panal (ESR 4) ``Dynamic maintenance of memory T cells in tissue: Challenging the static paradigm"
- Carina Bruckmaier (ESR 7) ``Regulatory T cells are short-lived, and their maintenance is largely independent of thymic output".
Springtime School 2023: Skin homeostasis and inflammation, Denmark
24 - 26 April 2023
Carina Bruckmaier (ESR 7) gave a presentation on "Grow old or die young – The lifespan of tissue-resident memory T cells in human skin" during Session 3 on Tissue Immunology.
Cold Spring Harbor meeting on Systems Immunology, New York
18-22 April 2023
Charandeep Kaur (ESR 5) presented a poster on "Comparison of activation induced markers to detect antigen specific CD8+ T cells" at this conference.
Bonn Conference on Mathematical Life Sciences, Bonn, Germany
17-20 April 2023
Sarah Benedetto (ESR 1) attended this conference and gave a poster presentation on "Evolutionary Dynamics of Oligodedrogliomas".
Mathematical and Computational Methods in Cancer and Biology Symposium, Columbia University, New York
16-18 March 2023
Sarah Benedetto (ESR 1) gave a poster presentation on her work on "Evolutionary Dynamics of Oligodedrogliomas" at this conference.
BSI Congress 2022, Liverpool
5 - 8 December 2022
Charandeep Kaur (ESR 5) gave presentation at the BSI Congress 2022 called ``Comparison of blood and lymph node cells after intramuscular injection with HIV envelope immunogens".
Paris Biological Physics Community Day, ENS, Paris
25 November 2022
María Ruiz (ESR 11) was one of the organisers of the 10th edition of the Paris Biological Physics Community Day, which is organised by young researchers in the Paris area with the aim of bringing together researchers in biological physics and creating an opportunity for sharing knowledge.
2022 Physics of Life: Students and Postdocs Edition, CUNY Graduate Centre
11 November 2022
María Ruiz (ESR 11) presented her project "Statistical Analysis of Sharing in Antibody Repertoires" at this symposium.
ECMTB conference, DKFZ, Heidelberg
19 - 23 September 2022
Two ESRs have given talks at this conference:
- Giulia Belluccini (ESR 6) gave a talk in the CT1 session on “Multi-type branching processes to study cellular dynamics”;
- Flavia Feliciangeli (ESR 13) was part of the MS3 session on Tuesday and her title was “Why are cell populations maintained via multiple intermediate compartments?”.
Four ESRs also gave poster presentations:
- Sarah Benedetto (ESR 1) "Evolutionary Dynamics of Oligodendrogliomas"
- Daniel Luque Duque (ESR 10) "Stochastic modelling of TCR-epitope recognition in the context of cross-reactivity"
- Léa Sta (ESR 3) "IL-7R mathematical modelling: algebraic expressions for amplitude and EC50"
- Van Thuy Truong (ESR 14) "Tumour microenvironment agent-based models of behaviour during cancer growth and treatment"
Sarah was also involved in the organisation of the conference.
More information on the talks can be found in the ECMTB 2022 abstract book.
German Stem Cell Network Conference, Munster
13 - 16 September 2022
Alessandro Greco (ESR 2) gave a talk on "Single-cell multi-omics unveils transcriptional regulation of the hematopoietic response to sepsis" at this conference.
Workshop and Symposium on "Physical Concepts and Computational Models in Immunology", Cargése, Corsica
22 August - 2 September 2022
María Ruiz (ESR 11) attended this workshop and also gave a poster presentation.
Keystone Symposia, Keystone Resort, Colorado, USA
29 June - 2 July 2022
Daniel Luque Duque (ESR 10) gave a presentation in Colorado at the "Viral Immunity: Basic Mechanisms and Therapeutic Applications" conference, part of the Keystone Symposia. His title was "Stochastic modelling of TCR-epitope recognition in the context of cross-reactivity".
Great Exhibition Road Festival, Imperial College London
18 - 19 June 2022
Charandeep Kaur (ESR 5) was part of the exhibition on "Microbes: The Good, The Bad and The Beautiful". The aim was to show everyone that microbes can be good as well as bad, especially as during these Covid days most kids probably think that all microbes/viruses are bad!
Evolutionary Biology and Ecology of Cancer, Wellcome Genome Campus, Cambridge
13 - 17 June 2022
Sarah Benedetto (ESR 1) presented a poster at this event on "Evolutionary Dynamics of Oligodendrogliomas".
Summer School on Dynamics and Statistics of Cancer Evolution : Applying Mathematics to Experimental and Clinical Data
6-10 June 2022
Van Thuy Truong (ESR 14) gave a flash talk on her project "Multi-scale model of T cell mediated tumour-immune interaction agent-based model" at this summer school at the Centre International de Rencontres Mathématiques, in Marseille. She also participated in group discussions and debates about topics regarding cancer evolution modelling, and was involved in drafting mini research proposals. More information is available on the summer school website.
2022 Annual meeting of the International Physics of Living Systems (iPoLs) Network, Montpellier, France
31 May – 3 June 2022
María Ruiz (ESR 11) gave a presentation at this event on her project "Statistical Analysis of Sharing in Antibody Repertoires".
Systems Medicine Seminar
24 May 2022
Van Thuy Truong (ESR 14) gave an online seminar as part of this series at the Laboratory for Systems Medicine, University of Florida.
NVVI Annual meeting, Noordwijkerhout, the Netherlands
24-25 May 2022
During the main annual meeting of the Dutch Society for Immunology, Elena de Dios Panal (ESR 4) presented her poster titled "Wildling mice proof: Longevity is not a characteristic of memory T cells in mice".
Bitesize Science Flash Talks
21 April 2022
Van Thuy Truong (ESR 14) gave an online 3 minute presentation of her research at this event organised by the University of Leeds.
World Conference of Pharmacometrics, South Africa
29 March - 1 April 2022
Van Thuy Truong (ESR 14) has presented an online poster at this conference on 31 March on "Tumour microenvironment agent-based models of emergent behaviour during development and treatment".
Seminar in the Mathematics of Reaction Networks
24 February 2022
Léa Sta (ESR 3) gave a presentation on "Mathematical modelling of a receptor-ligand system" as part of the virtual MORN seminar series.
Virtual 13th Conference on Dynamical Systems Applied to Biology and Natural Sciences (DSABNS)
8-11 February 2022
The following ESRs gave presentations (contributed talks) at this virtual conference:
- Léa Sta (ESR 3): “Control of IL-7 responsiveness through IL-7R subunits balance in effector T cells and analytic expressions for amplitude and EC50” (Léa received an award for her talk)
- Giulia Belluccini (ESR 6): "A multi-stage model of cell proliferation and death: tracking cell divisions with Erlang distributions"
- Daniel Luque Duque (ESR 10): "Stochastic modelling of TCR-epitope recognition in the context of cross-reactivity"
- Flavia Feliciangeli (ESR 13): "Why are cell populations maintained via multiple intermediate compartments?"
Steering Committee Member, and Mathematical and Computational Sciences Special Interest Group Liaison Officer, at the International Society of Pharmacometrics (ISoP) Student Committee
Since January 2022, Van Thuy Truong (ESR 14) has been in the above roles:
"The ISoP trainee community steering committee seeks to foster interest in pharmacometrics by promoting communication among trainees from various disciplines aiming for efficient drug development and rational drug treatment in patients. The main focus of this community is to create a dynamic platform for educational and scientific events that allows trainees to exchange and broaden their knowledge in this field. Furthermore, peers from all over the world now have the opportunity to interact and support each other’s professional development. Our mission is to give trainees the opportunity to voice and lead the future of pharmacometrics with ISoP. The ISoP trainee community is composed of trainee members from academic institutes across the globe."
"Inside the ISoP there are different special interest groups where people come together to exchange ideas, promote that field/special interest for the wider public of the pharmacometrics field.
Being the computational sciences special interest group liaison officer for the trainee committee involves being part of the computational sciences special interest group meetings and give updates and ensure communication between the trainee committee and the special interest group."
2022 DKFZ PhD Poster Presentation
Sarah Benedetto (ESR 1) presented a poster on "Evolutionary Dynamics of Oligodendrogliomas" at this conference. At this event students have the chance to present their work and get feedback from other students and scientists, in addition to finding out what other students at the DKFZ are working on.
British Society for Immunology (BSI) Congress
28 November - 1 December 2021
The following ESRs gave poster presentations at this in-person meeting in Edinburgh:
- Léa Sta (ESR 3): "Control of IL-7 responsiveness through IL-7R subunits balance in effector T cells and analytic expressions for amplitude and EC50"
- Charandeep Kaur (ESR 5): "Lineage of human CD8 T cell memory"
- Giulia Belluccini (ESR 6): "Multi-stage model of T cell proliferation and death"
- Daniel Luque Duque (ESR 10): "Multivariate competition for survival stimulus of T cell clonotypes in homeostasis"
- Laura Mora Bitria (ESR 12): "Inhibitory KIRs decrease HLA class II-mediated protection in Type 1 Diabetes"
Science is Wonderful online event
22-26 November 2021
Laura Mora Bitria (ESR 12) took part in this event where MSCA researchers gave presentations about their research project or the research field they are working in. Laura talked about how the immune system works and how they study it, and this was delivered to two classroms of 8 and 11 year olds (one in Romania and one in Spain).
4th Cours Multiscale Integration in Biological Systems, Institut Curie de Paris
4 - 10 November 2021
María Ruiz (ESR 11) gave a presentation on the project "Statistical Analysis in Immune Receptor Repertoires" at this conference.
On Future Synergies for Stochastic and Learning Algorithms conference, CIRM (Centre International de Rencontres Mathématiques), Marseille, France
27 September - 1 October 2021
María Ruiz (ESR 11) participated in this conference and presented the project "Statistical Analysis of Sharing in Antibody Repertoires".
Online 29th PAGE conference
2-3 and 6-7 September 2021
Van Thuy Truong (ESR 14) presented a poster on 2 September on "A comparison of ordinary differential equation and agent-based approaches to PKPD modelling in oncology". Her abstract can be found at the conference webpage.
6th European Congress of Immunology
1-4 September 2021
Léa Sta (ESR 3) and Elena de Dios Panal (ESR 4) each presented a poster at this virtual event:
- Léa: "Control of IL‐7 responsiveness through IL‐7R subunits balance in effector T cells and analytic expressions for amplitude and EC50"
- Elena: "T‐cell dynamics in a more natural mouse model"
Their abstracts can be found in the book of abstracts at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eji.202170200
In2ScienceUK programme
August 2021
As part of this programme, Charandeep Kaur (ESR 5) mentored three school students of year 9 through simple examples of her day to day life to give them an exposure of a research career.
SMEEB 2021: Stochastic Models and Experiments in Ecology and Biology
22-25 June 2021
María Ruiz Ortega (ESR 11) presented her work on Statistical analysis in Immune Repertoires at this meeting in Venice. More information can be found at https://liphlab.github.io/SMEEB2021/program/
Society for Mathematical Biology 2021 meeting
13-17 June 2021
Léa Sta (ESR 3), Giulia Belluccini (ESR 6), Daniel Luque Duque, (ESR 10) and Flavia Feliciangeli (ESR 13) gave separate contributed talks at this virtual event and their titles can be found in the image. More information on the meeting is available at https://www.smb2021.org
Léa Sta received the UCR Contributed Talk Award for Methods for Biological Modeling for her talk on “IL-7R mathematical modelling: algebraic expressions for amplitude and EC50”.
#MyJobinResearch challenge, summer 2020
Science is Wonderful! event, 22-24 September 2020
Flavia Feliciangeli (ESR 13) participated in the #MyJobinResearch video challenge organised by the REA in the summer 2020 and her video was selected - here is the Twitter link of Flavia's video.
The video was then displayed in the online platform of the Science is Wonderful! event in September, where Flavia also participated.
Qlife Winter School on Systems Immunology 2020, ENS, Paris
2 - 6 March 2020
Erdem Şanal (ESR 8) attended this workshop and also gave a poster presentation.
Leeds Science Festival
March 2020
ESRs 3 , 6, 10 and 14 went to high schools to give presentations on how mathematics can be applied to other fields, such as medicine.
Leeds Doctoral College Showcase 2019
10 December 2019
Flavia Feliciangeli (ESR 13)
The Leeds Doctoral College Showcase "celebrates the significant contribution that our researchers make to the research profile and academic life of the University. We bring the research community from across our campus together to celebrate the excellence and diversity of work being done by our postgraduate researchers. The day includes postgraduate researchers presenting their research in the following competitions: Three Minute Thesis (3MT), Research Image of the Year, and University of Leeds Postgraduate Researcher of the Year 2019".
Flavia was a finalist in the 3MT showcase where participants had just three minutes and one PowerPoint slide to communicate their thesis to a non-specialist audience. Her presentation on "Feeling overworked? Immune T cells can be too! And Math can help to find out more" is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYLnr0LppZs
Imperial Lates-Winter Wonderlab, Imperial College London
5 December 2019
Charandeep Kaur (ESR 5) took part in this public event, which celebrated the science and engineering at Imperial College London, by interacting with the school students and discussing basic immunology.
More information can be found at the Winter Wonderlab website
Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), Science Week
Science Night, Open labs for all the Family, 15 November 2019
HoChan Cheon (ESR 15)
Science Week is a week-long nationwide event in Ireland each November, celebrating science in our everyday lives. The Science Week programme includes workshops, science shows, talks, laboratory demonstrations, science-walks and other science-related events. It is a collaboration of events involving industry, institutes, teachers, researchers and students throughout Ireland to offer opportunities for general public to show how technology and science can create a positive impact on the society, and to engage with STEM.
Maynooth University and all science departments such as Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, Biology and Mathematics took a part in the Science Week (10 – 17 November 2019). Each department engaged with public by preparing a quiz session, opening the University Museum (Science & Ecclesiology), showing a biographical film about Claude Shannon (Information theory) and laboratory demonstration.
On the night of 15 November, local family members were invited to the laboratory demonstration. Here, HoChan volunteered to prepare and help the Mathematics and Statistics Department by demonstrating the beauty of Geometry via soap film and other toys. As HoChan's audiences were generally primary school kids, he was helping them to solve simple puzzles and explain the ideas and useful background information about the specific geometric properties.
European Researchers' Night events
September 2019
Noor Kherreh (ESR 9), Laura Mora Bitria (ESR 12), and Flavia Feliciangeli (ESR 13) have taken part in events that allow members of the public to see what science is all about:
Noor Kherreh was involved at the EU corner of the ERN in Zaragoza on 27 September.
She gave simple presentations to the people visiting the stall, mostly kids of school-going age accompanied by their parents. She followed the guidelines and training given to the ESRs in Maynooth and Leeds and kept the description of the project simple and easy to comprehend, keeping the audience in mind.
After the presentation, a fun quiz was conducted, for each group who visited the stall. This quiz game was formatted in a way, so that naive to experts all groups can play in an incremental way. A different set of questions were designed for different categories, a fixed number of questions were asked for each stage, and if the participant succeeded he/she moved to the next stage. The stages or categories were as follow: a) Beginner, b) Basic, c) Intermediate, d) Advanced, e) Expert.
A multiple-choice kind of game was also designed, to choose an option, the participant threw the ball in the corresponding marked bucket. Young kids preferred this game over the other format.
Flavia Feliciangeli took part in the Adventure Lab in Peterborough on 28 September 2019, and was involved in hands-on activities with the public;
Laura Mora Bitria participated at the EU Pub Café at the Natural History Museum in London on 27 September, which involved the public coming to have a relaxed and informal chat with a scientist over a drink. Laura talked with a variety of people from students that were deciding on doing research or not, and also with people with other backgrounds and age interested in knowing what her research was about, about her daily life, etc.
FEBS Congress, Hvar
25 September 2019
Alessandro Greco (ESR 2) gave a poster presentation at this conference.
Outreach with local school students
Notre Dame Sixth Form College, Leeds, September 2019
Léa Sta (ESR 3), Giulia Belluccini (ESR 6), Flavia Feliciangeli (ESR 13), and Van Thuy Truong (ESR 14)
The ESRs and School of Maths PhD students have given a presentation about themselves and their QuanTII projects, and in the future they will work with students at Notre Dame College on team projects such as computer modelling the spread of infectious disease like Ebola. They will also try and bring a human dimension and aim to encourage students, especially girls, to study science.
The ESRs continued to support the college students by mentoring small maths projects/sessions.
Boulder Summer School, Colorado, USA
8-26 July 2019
María Ruiz Ortega (ESR 11) attended the Summer School and gave a poster presentation entitled ``Statistical response in immune repertoires" to PhD students and academics. More details can be found on the Student Poster Abstracts webpage of the summer school.
Science Festival
Leeds, March 2019
Léa Sta (ESR 3), Giulia Belluccini (ESR 6) and Daniel Luque Duque (ESR 10)
"Medicine - Not just about medics"
Leeds, 2019
Daniel Luque Duque (ESR 10)
This event happened two times, the first time it was an open day at University of Leeds where schoolchildren came and we had a prepared activity for them regarding applications of maths in medicine; and the second time it was the same activity but we went to the schools (Bradford Girls Grammar School, Notre Dame Sixth Form College, Pinderfields Hospital School).