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Themes and topics

This event aims to bring together physical scientists and life scientists to devise new approaches to vaccines that could have great impact on human and animal health. The symposium will be hosted in the beautiful and historic Queens’ College in the centre of Cambridge. Through talks and posters and discussions, we will consider some of the latest approaches to create effective vaccines, exchange ideas, and nucleate collaborations to overcome existing barriers. The latest vaccines have depended upon advances in areas including nanotechnology, lipid/carbohydrate/nucleic acid modification, genomics, computational design, analytical chemistry and atomic resolution structural analysis. We intend for the event to be welcoming to life scientists without a background in physical sciences, as well as to physical scientists with no background knowledge of the immune system or vaccines but who have an interest to explore possible applications of their research. The event is organised through RSC Biotechnology Group, in partnership with Cambridge University Engineering Biology Interdisciplinary Research Centre.

Organisers

Mark Howarth (https://howarthgroup.org/) and Laurence Tiley (https://www.vet.cam.ac.uk/staff/dr-laurence-tiley)

Confirmed Speakers so far

Pietro Cicuta, Department of Physics, University of Cambridge
Max Crispin, Institute for Life Sciences, University of Southampton
Dame Sarah Gilbert, Pandemic Sciences Institute, University of Oxford
Neil King, Institute for Protein Design, University of Washington
Anne Osbourn, John Innes Centre
Asel Sartbaeva, Department of º£½ÇÉçÇø, University of Bath

Registration includes:

- Attendance at all scientific sessions
- Opportunity to submit a Poster abstract and be considered for the Poster prizes
- Opportunity for abstract to be considered for oral presentation, with particular consideration to early career researchers
- Refreshments throughout the meeting
- Lunch in Queens’ College

Deadline for registration, including abstract submission:

Friday 30th January 2026 at noon UK time.

Posters and oral presentations

We encourage attendees to submit posters so that they can share their research interests, network and help to drive new collaborations. As well as talks from leaders in the field, there are slots for talks from submitted poster abstracts, particularly for early career researchers.
Abstracts will be reviewed by the organisers. Authors will be notified that their abstract is approved, within 2 weeks following the submission deadline. Abstracts should include the name and affiliation of all authors. Abstract text should be a maximum of 200 words. The approaches described do not need to have data yet on the immune system or vaccination, but should certainly comment on the potential relevance. Registration at the conference is required for an abstract to be submitted.

Additional information

We regret that we are not able to assist with accommodation.
We do not have travel awards available.
There is very limited parking in Cambridge centre and attendees are encouraged to use public transport or the Park & Ride service (https://www.queens.cam.ac.uk/visiting-the-college/getting-to-queens/).