Oxford Events, the new replacement for OxTalks, will launch on 16th March. From now until the launch of Oxford Events, new events cannot be published or edited on OxTalks while all existing records are migrated to the new platform. The existing OxTalks site will remain available to view during this period.
From 16th, Oxford Events will launch on a new website: events.ox.ac.uk, and event submissions will resume. You will need a Halo login to submit events. Full details are available on the Staff Gateway.
Infectious disease-causing pathogens have plagued humanity since antiquity, and the COVID-19 pandemic has been a vivid reminder of this perpetual existential threat. Vaccination has saved more lives than any other medical procedure, and effective vaccines have helped control the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we do not have effective vaccines against rapidly mutating viruses, such as HIV; nor do we have a universal vaccine against seasonal variants of influenza or SARS-CoV-2 variants that may evolve in the future. The ability to develop effective vaccines that protect us from highly mutable viruses will help create a more pandemic-resilient world. I will describe how by bringing together approaches from statistical physics, virology and immunology, progress is being made to address this challenge. I will focus on broadly protective antibody responses. First, I will describe some general principles and then I will discuss how by combining physics-based modeling and data from humans who received COVID vaccines we are learning new mechanisms underlying the antibody response upon infection or vaccination.
