The 11th Annual Southeastern Immunology Symposium was held at the Red Mountain Theatre on August 16-17, 2024 and out of 208 abstract submissions, several lab members were chosen for their outstanding research.

Eddie-Williams Owiredu gave an oral presentation at the Graduate Biomedical Sciences and Joint Health Sciences 2024 Research Symposium on August 9. At the GBS Symposium, students presented their research in three formats: oral presentations, flash talk presentations, and a poster session. Students across all themes presented their research to postdoc judges, faculty, and peers. 

Eddie-Williams Owiredu won 2^nd place for the oral presentation. 

The “Robert Stroud Advanced Immunology Trainee Seminar” was held on May 16th, 2024. Immunology trainees compete for this excellent opportunity to present their studies to an intelligent, critical but friendly home crowd by submitting an abstract. This year, Eddie-Williams Owiredu (Mentor: Frances E. Lund, PhD, Microbiology) won the competition and gave a 20 minute presentation, followed by a 5 minute questions and answers session.

The title of Eddie-William Owiredu’s presentation is “The effect of IRF1 on B cell dynamics and autoimmunity”.

The Distingushed Fellows program, established in 2019, annually recognizes members for distinguished careers and outstanding scientific contributions as well as service to AAI and the immunology community. It honors active, long-term members (25 or more years) who have demonstrated one or more of the following: excellence in research accomplishment in the field of immunology; exceptional leadership to the immunology community in academia, foundations, nonprofits, industry, or government, at a national or international level; notable distinction as an educator. Election as a Distinguished Fellow occurs annually and is among the highest honors bestowed by AAI. 

Find more about the Distinguished Fellows of AAI—Class of 2024.

Aaron Lucander made to the finals of the UAB 3 Minute Thesis competition and presented the transplant project on Nov. 9, 2023.

The 2023 Drucilla Russ-Jackson and Dorothy Olivery Vaccine Lecture and Symposium was held on Oct. 11, 2023 at the Alys Stephens Center. Ungergraduate trainee Olivia Johnston won the top poster award in junior category and Eddie-Williams Owiredu in senior category with an award of $100 each. 

Olivia Johnston (center with the mask) was chosen as one of the Presidential Merit Finalists at the Society for Leukocyte Biology meeting. Instructors Aaron Silva Sanchez, Selene Meza-Perez, and graudate trainee Xinran Wang also attended and presented at the SLB2023 in Atlanta, GA.

Eddie-Williams Owiredu, graduate student of the Lund lab, collaborated with colleagues and professors from Ghana to organize a week-long workshop aimed at enhancing the research capacity of Ghanaian undergraduates and postgraduates. The event took place from September 4^th – 8^th and close to 200 participants from various universities in Ghana joined the workshop.

The workshop encompassed a wide range of training modules, including theory and techniques for cell isolation from tissues, flow cytometry, and data analysis with FlowJo, ELISA/ELISPOT, mouse models, and more.

Frances Lund, Ph.D., Charles H. McCauley professor in the Department of Microbiology and director of the Immunology Institute, and Anoma Nellore, M.D., associate professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases, are the latest winners of the Heersink School of Medicine’s Featured Discovery. This initiative celebrates important research from Heersink faculty members.

The study, “A transcriptionally distinct subset of influenza-specific effector memory B cells predicts long-lived antibody responses to vaccination in humans,” was published in Immunity.