Teaching Immunology in the developing world

The IUIS Education Committee is composed of 18 members from all continents, mandated to teach immunology in the developing world.

 

We have two main activities:

 

• to co-sponsor attendance of young scientists (graduate students, PDFs, and new investigators) to well-established Immunology courses,

• to help organizing courses in the developing world, that deal with relevant local problems while providing updates on current immunological issues and technologies. We work closely with immunological federations and societies, experts in the course content and local scientists to build exciting courses and pull our resources.

Our major focus in the last 3 years has been to set up our own brand of regional courses with a primary focus on the four corners of Africa and Latin America.

 

So far we have held 6 very interactive regional courses, recruiting between 35 and 70 students each, in Medellin, Colombia and Cape Town, South Africa in October 2015; Hammamet, Tunisia in April 2016; San Miguel Allende, Mexico in October 2016; Banjul in the Gambia in November 2016 and Gondar, Ethiopia in February 2017.

 

Upcoming 2017 courses will be in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Cape Town, South Africa. For each course, we set up an online preparatory module on Immunopaedia, the official education website of IUIS established and maintained by the Immunology Department of the University of Cape Town.

 

Our biggest achievement in 2016 has been to obtain a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant to support the Ethiopia and Brazil courses, a Volkswagen Foundation grant for the Gambia course, and a BioLegend award to organize a symposium on Global Challenges for Young Investigators at ICI2016.  With these grants alone, our committee quadrupled its annual budget and could increase substantially our outreach activities.

 

We invite all of you offering courses to contact us and consider co-sponsoring a few students from less affluent countries, to participate in your activities.