The session will be chaired by our one and only Andrew Hanton (Roslin Institute), and our presenters will be: 

Dr. Sophie Aicher               

The Sunnybrooke Institute, University of Toronto, Canada

“Characterization of innate immune features and disease tolerance in white-tailed deer infected with SARS-CoV-2”

Bio: I did my B.Sc. in Molecular Biotechnology at Technical University Munich including a voluntary 4th year that I spent at UBC in the lab of Prof. François Jean working on flaviviruses. I moved on to do a M.Sc in Virology at Imperial College London and did my thesis at the Pirbright Institute with Dr. Chris Netherton and Prof. Pippa Hawes working on African Swine Fever. I then did a 1 year research internship at the University of São Paulo in the laboratory of Prof. Edison Durigon to work on a arbovirus surveillance project in migratory birds. I then moved to Paris to do my PhD originally continuing the Brazil project and identify IFN signalling pathways in birds upon flavivirus infection. With the onset of pandemic, I changed my research focus but stayed with reservoirs and zoonotic viruses, so I then studied bats and coronaviruses. Finally, I moved for my PostDoc to the University of Toronto and am co-supervised by Dr. Samira Mubareka and Dr. Arinjay Banerjee to study host immune responses in wildlife reservoir species to emerging zoonotic viruses. 

 Dr. Max Erdmann

University of Liverpool, UK

“Recombinant temperature sensitive mutants of MHV to study coronavirus polyprotein processing”

Bio: I became interested in CoVs during the final months of my BSc in Medical Microbiology (Bristol) as the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic started. I started my PhD in September 2020 with Andrew Davidson (Bristol) which was focused on generating recombinant SARS-CoV-2 replicons and reporter viruses/spike swaps. Since June 2024 I have been working as a PDRA under Ed Emmott (Liverpool) investigating coronavirus polyprotein processing. 

Based on the feedback that we have received we have decided to slightly alter the structure of the WiP seminars. We realize that science doesn’t wait, and that sometimes some problems need immediate solutions. As such, we will add 15 minutes at the end of each seminar for troubleshooting so that whoever might need help that is not on the presenter roster can get a chance to ask their questions. You will simply need to put your question at the beginning of the seminar in the chat, and the moderator will address it at the end of the second talk. 

Calendar invites have been sent to all ECR members by uk-icn@liverpool.ac.uk.

Please note that the zoom link for the day is managed by Federico therefore any issues with access should be directed to Federico.deangelis@ed.ac.uk