Institute Hosts Department of Microbiology Summer School and Symposium

The Hariri Institute was pleased to host and co-sponsor the BU Department of Microbiology summer school and symposium for the Computational Immunology of B cells from June 11 through 14. Directed by Tom Kepler, professor of microbiology and director of the BU Immunology Training Program, the course featured faculty and symposium speakers from across the U.S. who are recognized experts in their fields.

Sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health—through its Modeling Immunity for Biodefense (MIB) program—the training program accepted an accomplished and diverse group of 22 students, including 11 PhD candidates, four MD and MD/PhD candidates, two postdoctoral fellows, and five academic faculty and research scientists. The four-day summer school was divided into eight sessions, with each session consisting of a theoretical component and a practical, hands-on component. Material covered included the foundations of computational biology, computational analysis of cytometric data, antibody structure, single-cell RNA sequencing, B-cell clonal analysis, and dynamical modeling.

The Institute held an evening reception on Thursday, June 14, which included poster presentations from the summer school attendees that covered a broad range of topics in immunology relating to B cell biology. The symposium on the following day focused on highlighting recent achievements in the development of sophisticated statistical and mathematical approaches to analysis of new measurement techniques applied to B-cell immunology.

[Read more on the Microbiology website]