Young EPIZONE Meeting 15th AM

Are you a young scientist and interested to meet and interact with other young scientists from all over Europe, then the Young EPIZONE meeting will be interesting for you.

The Young EPIZONE meeting will take place Wednesday April 26^th from 9.00 to 13.00. We are
working on an interesting program. Contact person for the Young EPIZONE meeting
is Vladimir Gajdov: vladimir.g@niv.ns.ac.rs

Travel grants

EPIZONE will sponsor some travel grants for young scientists. If you want to apply for a travel grant, look here for the guidelines for application.

Speakers

We are pleased to announce that dr Raymond Staals and dr Helmi Zakariah will give a (online) lecture during the young EPIZONE meeting.

Guest lecture: Dr. Raymond H.J. Staals, Associate Professor, Laboratory of Microbiology, Wageningen University & Research, The Netherlands

Highly-sensitive diagnostics using type III CRISPR-Cas systems

Raymond H.J. Staals conducted his PhD studies (on the human RNA exosome) at the Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, at the department of Biomolecular Chemistry. In 2011, he moved to the Wageningen University, where he worked as a postdoctoral fellow for 3 years on type III and other CRISPR-Cas systems in John van der Oost’s group. Raymond continued his postdoctoral studies on CRISPR-Cas adaptation by joining Peter Fineran’s lab at Otago University, New Zealand. In 2017, he returned to Wageningen University to start his own group, which focusses on elucidating and repurposing novel CRISPR-Cas system, with a strong focus on type III-CRISPR-Cas systems. Since 2019, he also acts as a scientific advisor of a newly-launched spin-off company called Scope Biosciences, that makes use of his type III technology as a novel diagnostic tool. He is also shareholder of the company and is listed as an inventor several (type III) CRISPR-Cas related patents patent applications.

Guest lecture: Dr Helmi Zakariah, WHO/ITU Working Group for AI in Health

Digital Epidemiology – Application of Artificial Intelligence in Disease Outbreak Surveillance

Dr Helmi Zakariah (MD, MPH) had his formal training in Medicine & International Public Health, and currently is the CEO of AIME Inc (AI for Medical Epidemiology) - a member of the WHO/ITU Working Group for AI in Outbreak Prediction. When the Covid19 pandemic reached Malaysia, he was tasked to lead the Digital Epidemiology portfolio for the Selangor State Task Force for Covid19 (STFC) – the most densely populated state in Malaysia, where he pioneered the nation’s first e-tracing ecosystem and IRC (Inherent Risk of Contagion) Modelling for outbreak containment. Within this capacity, he founded SELANGKAH – the Selangor State Digital Health & Welfare platform and is appointed as a member of SELPHAC (Selangor Public Health Advisory Committee).He regularly shares his thought on global health platforms such as the Chatham House Conferences, Geneva Health Forum and Commonwealth Digital Health Forum.