A look back at the Institut Pasteur Young Scientists Conference and 2021 award ceremony

On September 10, the senior management team and the Department of Scientific Affairs held the Institut Pasteur Young Scientists Conference. This was an opportunity to present and discuss the science carried out by early career scientists at the Institut Pasteur and to look ahead to the exciting future in store for research.

The event, only for internal scientists, was organized in a hybrid online/in-person format so that as many people as possible could see the presentations given by several G5 and U5 heads.

Each was able to present the latest research carried out by their respective teams in their areas of expertise and to summarize the aims and challenges of their research:

Iuliana Ene, head of the Fungal heterogeneity five-year group: Population heterogeneity in the context of antifungal drug resistance
Aleksandra Deczkowska, head of the Brain-immune communication five-year group: Immune mechanisms shape brain function throughout life
Nicolas Rascovan, head of the Microbial paleogenomics five-year group: Multiplex assays and algorithms for integrated serological surveillance of infectious diseases
Michael White, head of the Infectious Disease Epidemiology five-year group: Journey to the Americas in a genetic time-machine
Nolwenn Jouvenet, head of the Virus sensing and signaling est five-year group: Clash of the titans: viruses and interferons
Roberto Toro Olmedo, head of the Applied and Theoretical Neuroanatomy five-year group: A developmental and evolutionary perspective on neurodevelopmental disorders

Introduced by Stewart Cole, President of the Institut Pasteur, and hosted by Christophe d'Enfert, this series of presentations by entity heads was followed by the award ceremony for the 2021 Institut Pasteur Young Scientist Prize.

The prize was introduced in 2018 for the Institut Pasteur's 130th anniversary and is awarded each year to a PhD student and a post-doctoral fellow who were first authors of high-level research papers published during the year.

For this 2021 edition, Sofia Medvedeva from the Archaeal Virology 5-year Unit and Ziad El Nabhani from the Microenvironment and Immunity Unit were recognized for their respective research entitled "Virus-borne mini-CRISPR arrays" and "A window of opportunity for immune imprinting by gut microbiota."

Watch the scientific presentations given at the conference

See the video of the 2021 Institut Pasteur Young Scientists Conference