Conference presentations and awards recieved by LBEP members in 2020 and 2021 Staphylococcus Great Britain and Ireland 2020 Despite the impact of Covid-19 pandemic, LBEP were still able to put the best foot forward in 2020 and 2021, showcasing a variety of research at a range of digital conferences. In July 2020, the Staph GBI conference was hosted online by the Florey Institute (Sheffield), which saw Fiona Sargison present a flash talk entitled “Genome-scale identification of Staphylococcus aureus determinants of avian disease pathogenesis”. Her talk summarised the key findings of her PhD thus far employing transgenic chickens to analyse the avian immune cell tropism to S. aureus infection. Her presentation secured an award for best flash talk at the conference and she later presented her findings at both the Microbiology Society Avian Infectious diseases conference in September 2020 and at the ECAT Research In Progress meeting in November 2021, chaired by fellow LBEP member Dr Clark Russell. More information on Staph GBI 2020 can be found here. Microbiology Society Annual Conference 2021 The 2021 conference year kicked off in April with the Microbiology Society annual conference. Speaking at the Genetics and Genomics Forum, Josh Harling-Lee presented work on utilising the new network visualisation tool Graphia (graphia.app) to explore the topologically complex network graphs produced by pangenome analysis tools. Josh showed how to go from the standard output of such tools to an interactive, 3D network that can be investigated in real-time. The conference also saw poster presentations from Dr Amy Pickering, titled “The von Willebrand Binding Protein is the Archetypal Coagulase of the Staphylococcus Genus” and Jamie Gorzynski, titled “Exploring the Cryptic Epidemiological History of Legionnaires’ Disease in Scotland using Whole Genome Sequencing”. More information on the Microbiology Society annual conference 2021 can be found here. The Graphia tool can be downloaded here. Edinburgh Infectious Diseases Early Career Researcher Symposium 2021 The LBEP team also gave a strong showing at the Edinburgh Infectious diseases Early Career Researcher virtual symposium in October, with several members giving a three minute overview of their current research. Together, the team did a wonderful job in showcasing all the projects happening in the lab, well done all! More information on the EID Early Career Researcher Symposia 2021 can be found here.
