2013 ASP Conference news – WAAVP 2013

There is just over 2 weeks to go before we hit the deadline for submission of abstracts for the 2013 ASP Conference, which is being held in conjunction with the 24th International Conference of the World Association for the Advancement of Veterinary Parasitology in Perth from August 25-29 (see http://www.waavp2013perth.com).

 Submit Your Abstract

We’d like to see a wide spectrum of submissions from ASP members on all topics parasitological and on all parasites whether they be single celled or multicellular, parasites of medical, veterinary, wildlife or marine importance or simply interesting or beguiling. No parasitological topic is off limits – we want diversity to showcase to the world the breadth of Australian parasitology research and also to highlight themes, concepts and problems that bridge the gaps between human, animal, fish and other parasites.

 There’s almost certainly a theme or sub-theme to suit your research and, if not, you can always propose a theme by selecting “Other” from the list. Topics  include:

• Animal Production and Food Security
• Aquaculture and wild capture fisheries
• Biosecurity
• Buffaloes, camelids, goats 
• Cell biology and life cycles
• Challenging dogma
• Climate change
• Commercial livestock
• Companion Animals – challenges for the future
• Conservation and wildlife parasitism
• Diagnostics
• Drug resistance and drug discovery
• Ecology and epidemiology
• Extension and education
• Functional genomics
• Host-parasite interactions
• Parasitic effects on food production in developing countries
• Integrated production systems
• Marine parasitology 
• One World Health 
• Pigs 
• Poultry
• Performance animals
• Polyparasitism
• Population genetics
• Prophylactics and Therapeutics – new approaches
• Tropical veterinary parasitology
• Vectors and vector-borne diseases
• Vaccines and immunology
• Zoonoses
• Other topics

Support for Students

Research students are reminded that the ASP is, once again, generously supporting your attendance at the meeting with funding available to eligible ASP student members to help pay for your travel, accommodation and registration. To read the conditions of the 2013 ASP Student Conference Travel Grant and to apply please click on the following link (or copy and paste the url into your browser) - https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2013ASP

Workshops

Once again, the ASP will be funding and organising workshops for Early Career Researchers and research students. We can already confirm that there will be workshops on Wildlife Parasites and Bioinformatics and Phylogeny, to be held at Murdoch University on Sunday August 26, just before the conference starts. And, we’ll be staging other exciting events throughout the meeting. Contact Lisa Jones  (lisa.jones1@jcu.edu.au) for details.

The Best International and Australian Speakers

At the same time, a very exciting invited speaker program, with something for everyone, is being put together. Invited speakers this year include:

ASP Presidential Address

Professor Denise Doolan is a molecular immunologist who heads the Molecular Vaccinology Laboratory at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research.  Her research investigates the molecular basis of immunity to disease, with a focus on malaria and model systems that can inform the basic immunology, mechanisms and antigenic targets of immunity, and efficacy of candidate vaccines.  She has specific expertise in the preclinical and clinical evaluation of molecular vaccine platforms (including plasmid DNA and recombinant virus vaccines), the delineation of mechanisms of cell mediated protective immunity, and the identification of novel vaccine candidates using immunomics and genome-wide screening approaches.  Key interest areas include malaria, vaccine development, immunology and functional genomics.

ASP Invited International Lecturers

Prof. John Dalton is a Canada Research Chair in Infectious Diseases at the Institute of Parasitology, McGill. He is also a Professor in Biotechnology and Director of McGill’s Graduate Program in Biotechnology. Before joining McGill, Dalton was Director of the Institute for the Biotechnology of Infectious Diseases (IBID), University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia. He was awarded the New South Wales Government BioFirst Award in Biotechnology between 2003-2008. Prof. Dalton received his BSc (Hons) in Zoology/Biochemistry (1980) and a PhD in Parasitology (1984) at University College Dublin. He spent postdoctoral training periods in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, (Baltimore, USA) and at the Laboratories of Parasitic Diseases, National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, MD, USA). Between 1992 and 1998 he spent several research sabbaticals at the Queensland Institute for Medical Research (QIMR), Brisbane, Australia (in 2012 he was awarded the QIMR Bancroft Fellow-in-Residence Award). His interests include anti-malaria drug design, vaccine development against helminth parasites of animals and humans, and discovery of novel helminth parasite-derived immunotherapeutics. Prof. Dalton is specialist editor for the International Journal of Parasitology, international editor for Parasite Immunology and an associate editor for PlosNTD.

Prof. Julie Fitzpatrick is the Scientific Director of the Moredun Research Institute and Chief Executive of the Moredun Group. Moredun has maintained one of the largest livestock parasitological research groups worldwide, with a particular focus on development of vaccines, diagnostics and disease control programmes for nematode and protozoan parasites. Professor Fitzpatrick’s research interests focus on livestock health and disease in the UK and in developing countries. She is a member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons Research Committee and is also Vice-Chair of the Board of GALVmed, and Chairman of the Technical Subcommittee of GALVmed, a public private partnership focusing on supporting the development of biologicals and therapeutics for neglected diseases in developing countries. She acted as Chairman of the British Veterinary Association’s Veterinary Policy Group until 2007, and has been appointed to the Research Excellence Framework (2013) Panel to assess veterinary, agricultural and food science areas in the higher education institute sector. She is a member of the BBSRC’S Food Security Strategic Advisory Panel, of The Wellcome Trusts’ Veterinary Fellowship Panel and of the International Scientific Advisory Board of the Southern Africa Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance (SACIDS). In 2011, she took up a part-time position as Chair in Food Security in the College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences at the University of Glasgow.

Dr. Susan Little is Regents Professor and Endowed Chair in Veterinary Parasitology at the Center for Veterinary Health Sciences, Oklahoma State University, where she is active in parasitology teaching and oversees a research program that focuses on tick-borne diseases. She received her DVM from Virginia Tech and her PhD in veterinary parasitology from the University of Georgia. Dr. Little has authored more than 100 publications on veterinary and human parasites and tick-borne disease agents. She has served as president of AAVP, board member of CAPC, and on the editorial boards of Veterinary Parasitology, Veterinary Therapeutics, and Journal of Wildlife Diseases. 

Elsevier Lecturers

IJP Lecturer - Professor Adrian Hehl is a Professor in the Institute of Parasitology at the University of Zurich. He received his PhD from the University of Bern in 1994 for his studies on surface antigen expression in African trypanosomes. After postdoctoral training at the University of Bern and Stanford University, he became a laboratory head at the Institute of Parasitology, University of Zurich in 1998. The main focus of Professor Hehl’s research is the cell biology and the biochemistry of Giardia lamblia and Toxoplasma gondii. He has discovered and dissected mechanisms and structures involved in host-parasite interactions and transmission. In particular, his research has mapped events linked to stage-differentiation to environmentally resistant and infectious parasite forms. He has also investigated mechanisms of gene regulation, protein trafficking, organelle genesis and maturation, lipid biosynthesis and formation of the Giardia cyst wall. 

IJP:DDR Lecturer  - Professor Tim Geary is the Director of the Institute of Parasitology at McGill University, Canada. Coming from a 20-year career in the pharmaceutical industry, Tim has a strong background in drug discovery and in all aspects of the pharmacology of antiparasitic drugs. This work includes the molecular identification of drug targets through functional genomic analysis of helminth physiology and the engineering of recombinant systems for high-throughput screening for new antiparasitic leads. His lab does research on drug targets in parasites and on the chemotherapy of antiparasitic drugs. In addition, Tim’s interests include basic work on the proteins secreted by parasites and hosts that determine the success of infection. Proteomic analysis of the ‘secretome’ of filarial parasites, and the manner in which drugs such as ivermectin affect the secretome, is a focus of his research.

IJP:PAW Lecturer - Dr. Susan Kutz is an Associate Professor at the University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Calgary, Alberta. Dr. Kutz also holds positions as an Adjunct Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Calgary, Research Associate, Arctic Institute of North America, University of Calgary, Research Associate, Canadian Circumpolar Institute, University of Calgary. Her areas of expertise include wildlife parasitology, disease ecology, ecosystem health, arctic ecology, climate change, and community-based disease surveillance. 

Plenary Lecturers

A/Professor Brown Besier is a principal veterinary parasitologist with the WA Department of Agriculture and Food and a research leader in the CRC forSheep Industry Innovation. His research interests include the: ecology, epidemiology and control of sheep nematodes internal and external parasites of livestock; anthelmintics and anthelmintic resistance in nematodes of ruminants; non-chemical nematode control strategies; and improved diagnostic technologies for sheep nematode infections. He is passionate about the communication of information to the livestock industries. 

Professor Ian Beveridge is Professor of Veterinary Parasitology in the Faculty of Veterinary Science at the University of Melbourne. His research interests include systematics and biology of helminth (round worms) and arthropod (ecto) parasites of marsupials, systematics of cestodes (tapeworms) of elasmobrachs (sharks, rays, skates), ticks, and diagnosis and pathogenesis of helminth infections in domestic animals. He has previously been employed by the Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science in Adelaide, South Australia and the Department of Tropical Veterinary Sciences at James Cook University in North Queensland, Australia. Ian contributes to the Australian Society for Parasitology and editorial boards of several international journals. Professor Beveridge is a major contributor to wildlife disease research and publications at the Faculty of Veterinary Science, commencing with the wildlife disease unit during the 1970s. He has produced eleven book chapters, eight monographs, 270 papers in refereed scientific journals, including many on diseases and parasites of Australian wildlife.

Emeritus Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Johannes Eckert, graduated from the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Germany, was Professor of Veterinary and Medical Parasitology at the University of Zurich, Switzerland from 1968 until 1997. His scientific interests have covered a broad field of parasitoses of animals and humans, including parasitic zoonoses with emphasis on echino-coccosis. He was member of the WHO Advisory Panel on Parasitic Diseases (1972-1997) and Chairman of the WHO Informal Working Groups on Echinoccosis (1985-1995). In 1963 he joined WAAVP, and has severed for 14 years as member of the Executive Committee or as president (1983-1987). He was recipient of WAAVP Honorary Membership (1995), the WAAVP/Pfizer Award for Excellence in Teaching of Veterinary Parasitology (1999) and many other international honorary awards.

Dr Doug Gray has been a research scientist and manager, most recently with the Australian Centre for International Agricultural research with interests in livestock diseases of regional significance, including transboundary diseases, zoonotic diseases, diseases affecting production and diseases affecting trade and market access. Dr He was with ACIAR from 2008 to 2012 after five years as a consultant in livestock research and development in Asia and Australia. Between 1998 and 2003 he was based in the Philippines, as regional coordinator for the International, Livestock Research Institute. Before that he, was at  the University of New England teaching, and researching parasitology, disease control, and extension. He trained in Scotland as a zoologist and parasitologist and migrated to Australia ‘by accident’ after some years with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Nigeria and Ecuador and is now based on Kangaroo island in South Australia.

Dr. Ronald Kaminsky is presently working at Novartis Animal Health in Switzerland where he is responsible for the parasitology research. He has worked previously in malaria research at the University of Göttingen in Germany, and subsequently on cultivation techniques for African trypanosomes at the University of Amherst (USA) and for 6 years at ILRAD in Africa. He moved to the Swiss Tropical Institute (now STPH) in Basel where he worked for 6 years on mechanisms of drug resistance and in vitro screening technologies for various parasites. Dr Kaminsky received two Animal Welfare Awards for the innovation of in vitro techniques. He has published about 90 papers, and is pursuing some teaching at the University in Bern, Switzerland. After joining Novartis Animal Health, Dr Kaminsky was deeply involved in the discovery and development of the anthelmintic monepantel (Zolvix). 

Prof. Dr. Norbert Mencke, graduated DVM from Veterinary School Hannover, Germany (Stiftung Tierärztliche Hochschule Hannover) 1987. Doctoral thesis conducted at the Department of Agriculture Adelaide, Australia and the Institute for Parasitology, Tierärztliche Hochschule Hannover. Specialization degree in Parasitology (Fachtierarzt für Parasitologie) and Diplomate of the European Veterinary Parasitology College (EVPC). Current position: Head of Global Veterinary Services, Global Marketing Companion Animal Products at Bayer Animal Health. Various previous positions in research  and development at Bayer, e.g. research work on insecticidal as well as anthelmintic compounds. Involved in the discovery of the cyclodepsipeptides leading to emodepside (Profender) and the combination of imidacloprid plus permethrin (Advantix). Founder of the CVBD (canine vector-borne diseases) World Forum. Professional activities: Lecturing parasitology at the University of Hannover (Institute for Parasitology), Memberships: German Society for Parasitology (DGP, DVG), The Australian Society for Parasitology (ASP), The American Association of Veterinary Parasitologists (AAVP), and the American Heartworm Society (AHS). Invited speaker at numerous national and international scientific meetings. More than 80 publications in peer-reviewed veterinary parasitology journals. 

Dr. Yaowalark Sukthana is currently Dean of the Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University, and Director of SEAMEO TropMed Centre, Thailand. After obtaining her Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine, she graduated her MD and completed full residency training in Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, before switching to Tropical Medicine and acquiring her DTM&H and MCTM. She joined the Department of Protozoology in 1995 and served as Chair from 2002 to 2009. Now an Associate Professor, and published in a wide variety of national and international journals, Dr. Yaowalark’s main research interests are in toxoplasmosis, intestinal protozoa and zoonoses.

Prof. Paul Torgerson is a graduate of Cambridge University Veterinary School. Following a spell in in clinical practice he held various research and academic appointments at Cambridge University, University College Dublin, Institute of Parasitology Zurich and Ross University St Kitts in parasitology, parasite epidemiology and public health. He was appointed to the newly created chair of Veterinary Epidemiology at Zurich University in 2009. He has major research interests in the quantitative epidemiology of parasitic diseases and collaborates with the WHO on estimating the socioeconomic burden of various zoonoses and food borne diseases. He has published over 130 papers and book chapters and is a co-editor of the Oxford Textbook of Zoonoses.

Can’t wait to see you there!