Program
Program
Scientific Program and Symposia
The Local Organising Committee is arranging an exciting, more concise program for ASM 2012 that will cover contemporary issues and developments in microbiology. The program will consist of new focus areas including but not limited to: the changing nature of key infectious agents including Mycobacteria; the emergence and evolution of multiple-antibiotic resistance; aspects of microbial geochemistry in extreme environments; cell-signalling and responses in viral infections; molecular pathogenesis of bacterial disease; clinical microbiology and case studies in infectious diseases, environmental genomics; and marine microbiology.
Symposia will include but are not limited to:
Division 1: Tropical Medical Microbiology: Sultry Bugs and Hot Microbiologists; One Health Microbiology: One World, One Medicine; Veterinary Microbiology: Microbiology Down on the Farm; Diagnostic Microbiology & Epidemiology: Back to the Future; Antimicrobial Agents & Vaccines: Bug Wars: The Sequel
Division 2: Virus Assembly, Structure and Trafficking; Immune Response and Viral Pathogenesis; Vaccines and Antivirals; Virus Replication & Modulation of Host Defences; Emerging Viruses and Environment
Division 3: Microbes and Water; Food Microbiology; Applied Microbiology & Ecology; Teaching Microbiology; Environmental Microbiology and Informatics
Division 4: Host-Pathogen Interactions; Molecular Microbiology; Bacterial Genomics; Metabolism, Physiology and Genetics
Workshops
PCR - issues to be aware of (sponsored by Qiagen)
Organisers: David Whiley, Seweryn Bialasiewicz, Theo Sloots.
This dry workshop will comprise a series of seminars and discussion looking at common, and not so common, problems encountered with the use of PCR in microbial diagnostics. Topics will include issues associated with sequence variation, quantitation, quality control, multiplexing and competitive inhibition.
When: Sunday 1st July, 8.00am-12.00pm
Where: Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre
Cost: Free (morning tea and lunch provided)
CDS Workshop
Organisers: Sydney M Bell1, and Jeanette N Pham11Department of Microbiology, SEALS, Sydney
As in previous years the CDS workshop will be an interactive session pitched mainly at laboratories who use the CDS method of antibiotic susceptibility testing. However those who use other methods of testing are welcome and are encouraged to join in the discussion. This year additions and modifications to the 6th Edition of the CDS Manual will be presented. The testing of Enterococci against tetracycline will be discussed and a possible new use for doxycycline also will presented. A complete revision of table 4 of the Manual has been undertaken and the changes will be explained. There will be a quiz on recognition of the different patterns of antibiotic susceptibility zones on disc testing and this will be followed by a general discussion.
When: Monday 2nd July, 4.00pm to 5.30pm
Where: Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre
Cost: Free
Agenda
1. Welcome
2. Additions and Modifications to 6th Edition of Manual
3. Susceptibility Testing of Enterococci in UTIs
4. Testing and Reporting betalactams and Gram negative organisms
5. Quiz
6. Discussion
Microbial Informatics Workshop
Organisers: Kathryn Holt, Nicola Petty
This workshop will focus on technical issues surrounding the analysis of microbial next-generation sequence data. It will involve a mix of presentations and discussion, themed around two areas:
Data quality issues
Tools and techniques
Participants are invited to submit abstracts for presentations on methods or software tools they have developed for microbial informatics (email ASMinformatics2012@gmail.com).
Target audience: People involved in hands-on analysis of next-generation sequence data. Students are encouraged to participate.
When: Sunday 1st July
Time: 1pm to 4pm
Where: Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre
Cost: Free (lunch and afternoon tea provided)
Enquiries: email ASMinformatics2012@gmail.com
Speakers
The 2012 ASM Annual Scientific Meeting brings you world leading scientists presenting their current research on diverse microbiology topics.
Rubbo Oration
Ian Frazer, University of Queensland, Australia
Bazeley Oration
Amanda Leach
Fenner Lecture
Johnson Mak
Plenary Lecturers
Jean-Paul Latge, Pasteur Institute, France
Henry Bishop, Parasitology PDB/DPD Reference Diagnostic Laboratory, CDC, USA
Sebastien Gagneux, Swiss Tropical & Public Health Institute, Switzerland
Ralph A. Tripp Georgia Research Alliance Chair, University of Georgia, USA
Herbert W. Virgin, Washington University School of Medicine, USA
Harvey Rubin Institute for Strategic Threat Analysis and Response, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Jill Banfield, University of California, Berkeley USA
Jean-Marc Ghigo, Institute Pasteur, France
Trinad Chakraborty , Justus-Liebig-University, Germany.
Ian Frazer
Ian Frazer is director of the Diamantina Institute of Cancer Immunology and Metabolic Medicine, a research institute of the University of Queensland at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane. He was trained as a renal physician and clinical immunologist in Edinburgh, Scotland before emigrating in 1981 to Melbourne, Australia to continue his clinical training and to pursue studies in viral immunology and autoimmunity at the Walter and Eliza Hall institute of Medical Research with Prof Ian Mackay. In 1985 he moved to Brisbane to take up a teaching post with the University of Queensland, and he now holds a personal chair as head of the Diamantina Institute. This institute employs over 200 researchers and trains over 30 postgraduate students. Dr Frazer's current research interests include immunoregulation and immunotherapeutic vaccines, for which he holds research funding from several Australian and US funding bodies. Dr Frazer teaches immunology to undergraduate and graduate students of the University. He is president of the Cancer Council Australia. He has sat on various committees of the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia continuously over the last 15 years. He advises the WHO on papillomavirus vaccines. He was chosen as the 2006 Queenslander of the Year and the 2006 Australian of the Year.
Amanda Leach
A/Prof Amanda Leach has co-directed and led the Ear Health Research Program at Menzies School of Health Research, Northern Territory for the last 15 years. A/Prof Leach's research aim is to improve Indigenous child health outcomes through evidence based, multidisciplinary research at the interface of field, clinical, and laboratory research. Her work represents some of the first clinical trials implemented in remote Australia, and she has become recognized internationally in the area of pneumococcal research. Her research has addressed questions regarding the aetiology of otitis media in Indigenous babies, antibiotic efficacy for chronic suppurative otitis media, and the history of these infections in remote communities. A/Prof Leach has conducted trials of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines in Australia and has been involved in multiple public health research programs. She has received Career Development, and Senior Research Fellowship Awards from NHMRC, is the inaugural Elizabeth Blackburn Fellow of the NHMRC, and has received grants totaling ~$21M since 2004. A/Prof Leach has served as a panel member for NIH (USA) and NHMRC, and has undertaken consultancies with GlaxoSmithKline.
Johnson Mak
Professor Johnson Mak is Chair in Infectious Diseases within Deakin University School of Medicine. He is also Head of the Deakin HIV and Emerging Virus Laboratory at CSIRO AAHL.
Johnson completed his PhD in 1996 in the field of molecular virology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He then accepted an invitation to setup a research group within the AIDS Pathogenesis Research Unit at the Burnet Institute. Johnson has recently joint Deakin University and CSIRO AAHL.
Johnson is a molecular virologist by training, and has a strong interest in HIV assembly. Johnson has consistently secured research funding from both national and international sources and published in a number of prestigious journals contributing to the field of retroviral assembly. He has a keen interest in the development of novel approaches to dissect the biology of HIV, more recently, he has applied some of these techniques to delineate the early steps (uncoating) of HIV replication. He has been a recipient of various prestigious fellowships, including Canadian NHRDP, NHMRC Peter Doherty, Monash Logan, Pfizer, and ARC Future fellowships. His laboratory employs a combination of molecular virology, cell biology and protein biochemistry approaches to investigate the deadly HIV pathogen, through basic research with the ultimate goal of developing effective prevention and treatment of HIV infection.
Jill Banfield
Jill Banfield is a geomicrobiologist whose work focuses on the relationship between microorganisms and their chemical environments, most notably minerals. Her work has helped us understand how microorganisms alter their chemical and physical environments, such as during bioremediation. As an Australian native, Banfieldfs career began at the Australian National University where she completed her bachelors and masters degrees (1985). She graduated with a PhD in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Johns Hopkins University in 1990. Throughout her career, Banfield has been a professor at universities worldwide, including the University of Wisconsin, Madison and The University of Tokyo. Since 2001, she has been a professor at the University of California Berkeley, where she heads their geomicrobiology program and works under the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Her research spans from field sites in California to Australia and from subjects of astrobiology, extremophiles, how microorganisms impact mineralogy, and genomics/geosciences. She is a pioneer in the new scientific field called "nanogeoscience" which investigates geological processes that involve particles no larger than 100 nanometers. She also leads a NASA-funded study to determine whether life ever existed on the planet Mars. Her work has appeared in the worlds top scientific publications including Science and Nature, and she is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2010, Jill was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth and Environmental Science, and The L'Oreal.-UNESCO Award for exceptional women in science.
Henry Bishop
Mr. Bishop began his career at CDC in 1983 assisting in research on schistosomiasis from life cycle maintenance to diagnostics to population studies. In 1994, he moved to the Morphology Reference Diagnostics Laboratory that provides diagnostic assistance to State Public Health Laboratories, hospitals and medical centers, and international agencies. There he received training in the diagnosis of parasitic diseases, both on the job as well as attending the Diagnostic Parasitology Course at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, MD. He is also a founding member of DPDx, a web-based resource for diagnostic assistance for parasitic diseases. In addition to being a reference for identifying parasites, a major component of DPDx is providing telediagnosis assistance via the electronic submission of images by laboratorians world-wide. The DPDx team also conducts workshops in the morphologic identification of parasites and molecular methods for detecting parasites both at CDC and internationally.
Sebastien Gagneux
Sébastien Gagneux is Unit Head and Assistant Professor at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) & University of Basel, Switzerland. He received his PhD from the University of Basel in 2001 and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University and at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle. Before joining Swiss TPH in 2010, he spent three years as a Program Leader at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research in London, UK. Dr. Gagneux studies the cause and consequence of genetic diversity in Mycobacterium tuberculosis from a micro and macro evolutionary perspective.
Jean-Marc Ghigo
Jean-Marc Ghigo obtained his PhD in microbiology in 1994 on the study of type 1 protein secretion and haem acquisition in Gram-negative bacteria with Pr. Cécile Wandersman at the Institut Pasteur, Paris, France. In 1996 he joined the laboratory of Pr. Jon Beckwith at Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA, as a a post-doctoral fellow, to study cell division in Escherichia coli. He then returned to the Institut Pasteur in 1999 to develop an independent project on bacterial biofilm formation as a 5 year -(G5)- group leader from 2002 to 2007. He is now head of the Genetic of Biofilms Unit since 2007. Jean-Marc Ghigo is Associate Professor and deputy director of the Department of Microbiology. In his laboratory, genetic, genomic and molecular biology approaches are used to study biofilms formation and biofilm original biological properties.
Jean-Paul Latge
Professor Jean-Paul Latge led a group of scientists over the past decade with interests being mainly research and clinical interests on A. fumigatus infections in immunocompetent and immunosuppressed patients. The focus of the research is on the biology of A. fumigatus and the diseases it causes. Three major research areas have been developed: diagnosis of aspergillosis in immunocompetent and immunocompromised hosts, identification of host and fungal factors that play a role in the establishment of the fungus in vivo, study of cell wall biosynthesis with the aim of discovering new antifungal drugs. He has developed key understanding of the pathogenesis of invasive aspergillosis: construction of mutants tested in a mouse model of IA; killing by phagocytes, molecular epidemiology and diagnosis (antigen characterisation) of aspergillosis. Morphogenesis: study of enzymes involved in conidial germination and cell wall construction.
Harvey Rubin
Harvey Rubin is the Director of Penn's Institute for Strategic Threat Analyis and Response (ISTAR), and Associate Dean for Student Affairs in the School of Medicine.
The Rubin laboratory is involved in several projects including pathogenesis of dormancy in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Enzymology and cell biology of serine proteases and serine protease inhibitors and Biomolecular Computation. The lab showed how macromolecules can be manipulated to carry out fundamental logical operations and can be wired together as reversible logic gates. The lab is collaborating with members of the School of Engineering on modeling complex biological behavior using a hybrid systems approach that combines continuous and stochastic modalities.
Ralph A. Tripp
Dr. Ralph Tripp joined the University of Georgia (UGA) in 2004. He is a Professor and Georgia Research Alliance Chair in Vaccine and Therapeutic Studies in the Department of Infectious Diseases at UGA. He is also the Director of the Influenza Pathogenesis and Immunology Research Center, Associate Director of the Regional Center of Excellence for Influenza Virus Research and Surveillance, and an Adjunct Professor in the Virus Research Group at the University of Canberra, and an Adjunct Professor at the School of Infection & Host Defense at the University of Liverpool. Before joining UGA, Dr. Tripp was a Section Chief in the Respiratory and Enteric Viruses Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta where he studied immunity and disease pathogenesis associated with respiratory virus infections. Dr. Tripp oversees research activities at the Animal Health Research Center at UGA which is a state-of-the-art BSL3AG+ large and small animal containment facility. He has published >100 journal articles, written various chapters on virology and immunology in text books, and given numerous invited lectures and conference presentations on disease intervention strategies for emerging viral infections.
Dr. Tripp is on the scientific advisory board of three biopharmaceutical companies and health care advisory panels, a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, a member of the Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute and Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center at UGA, and member of numerous scientific societies. His honors include recipient of the Outstanding Service Award to the State of Georgia, Service Award of the Georgia Veterinary Scholars, NIAID Special Recognition Award for Extraordinary Work in Influenza Research, Honors Award for Undergraduate Research Opportunities at UGA, the Georgia BioBusiness and Academic Entrepreneur of the Year. His program management experience includes designing and leading multi-projects at the CDC and Army Research Laboratories/Department of Defense, leading CRADA development for multi-institution projects, developing a Regional Center of Excellence in Influenza Research and Surveillance, as well as participating in Agrosecurity Awareness Training Strategy for the state of Georgia. Dr. Tripp is a co-founder and the Chief Scientific Officer of Argent Diagnostics, Inc, and CSO of Trellis Biosciences- GA.
Herbert W. Virgin
Dr. Virgin did his undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral and internal medicine training at Harvard University and the Brigham and Women's Hospital. He became the Edward Mallinckrodt Professor and Chair of Pathology and Immunology Washington University School of Medicine in 2006. Honors include the American Society for Clinical Investigation (1998), American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2004), American Association of Physicians (2007), American Academy for Microbiology (2010), and Board of Reviewing Editors for Science magazine (2010). His research defines mechanisms of viral disease and immunity. His work has been cited more than 9000 times and 27 articles have been cited >100 times.
Trinad Chakraborty
Professor Trinad Chakraborty obtained his PhD from the Free University of Berlin. Following his "Habilitation" from the University of Wuerzburg, he was awarded a Heisenberg Professorship by the German Research Council (DFG). He is currently Chairman of the Centre of Medical Microbiology and Virology and coordinates several national and European research consortia. Professor Chakraborty was the recipient of the Descartes Research Prize of the European Union in 2008. Professor Chakraborty is coordinator of the Hessian Alliance of Emerging and Emergency Infections of the Universities of Giessen and Marburg, and an institutional member of the National German Centre for Infectious Diseases Research. He is also Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the Justus-Liebig-University in Giessen, Germany.