Dear Colleague,

On behalf of the Organising Committee, we extend a warm invitation to attend the 2012 ASP Annual Conference, which will be held in Launceston, Tasmania, Australia between Monday 2 and Thursday 5 July at the Country Club Tasmania.

The 2012 ASP Annual Conference program includes an outstanding mix of quality international and Australian scientists and features events for early career researchers and the general public with the following themes and invited speakers:

Elsevier Lectures

• IJP Lecture – David Sacks (NIH, Bethesda)
• IJP DDR Lecture – Ian Fairweather (Queens University Belfast)

Fascioliasis

• Carlos Carmona (Instituto de Higiene, Uruguay)
• Terry Spithill (LaTrobe)
• Grace Mulcahy (University College Dublin)

Marine Parasitology and Aquaculture

• Stewart Johnson (Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada)
• Brian Jones (WA Fisheries)
• Barbara Nowak (UTas)
• Terry Miller (QLD Museum)

Malaria Immunology

• James Beeson (Burnet)
• Brendan McMorran (UTas)
• Jennifer Reiman (Griffith)

State-of-the-Art Technologies

• Simon Foote (UTas)
• Iñaki Iturbe-Ormaetxe (Monash)

Public event "Parasites and Marsupial Conservation"

• Greg Woods (Menzies, UTas)
• Ian Beveridge (UMelb)
• Andrew Thompson (Murdoch)

Register and submit an abstract online for this conference (https://www.conftool.net/parasitology2012/) Everyone is welcome to attend our free public event "Parasites and Marsupial Conservation" in the Country Club Tasmania Theatre, Mt Pleasant Room, Monday 2 July 2012 from 6 – 7pm. Pre-event drinks in the Country Club Tasmania foyer from 545pm and the Conference Welcome Reception will be held in the adjacent Tonic Bar aferwards. This year Rowena Martin (ANU) will run an evening Early Career Event Tuesday 3 July, whilst Postgraduate students can participate in a Introductory Phylogenetic Systematics – from Sequence to Trees workshop, run by Terry Miller (Queensland Museum) and Jason Mulvenna (James Cook University) will offer bioinformatics workshop (more details about these workshops to follow). There will also be a Student breakfast on Wednesday 4 July. Keep checking this website and the ASP website for more details, sign yourself up for RSS feeds or follow the ASP website on Facebook or Twitter www.parasite.org.au

Please contact the Conference Coordinator, Lisa Jones by email (lisa.jones1@jcu.edu.au) or telephone 07 4042 1311 with any queries.

The ASP and the Network acknowledge the generous support of the International Journal for Parasitology, Elsevier, IJP: DDR, Virbac Animal Health, Meat and Livestock Australia, New England BioLabs Inc., and Launceston City Council who are sponsoring this conference.

We look forward to welcoming you to Country Club Tasmania, Launceston in July 2012.

Cheers,