GoingToMeet

Due to the popularity of the poster sessions and because they are a critical part of our program, we have added an additional poster session that will follow the Opening Ceremony and the Keynote Presentation. The Opening Ceremony and Keynote Presentation will begin at 15:00 on September 8th. Please note that this is an earlier time than in previous years. The Opening Reception in the Exhibit Hall will be held after the poster session. Therefore, if you are traveling from overseas, plan to arrive in Kyoto on Tuesday, September 7.

An exciting, new feature of the poster sessions will be poster walk-throughs. This will consist of poster session chairs leading attendees through a review of the top posters within each category. There will be recognition of the best poster in each category.

Shizuo Akira, MD, PhD
Professor of Department of Host Defense, Research Institute for Microbial Diseases and Director of the WPI Immunology Frontier Research Center (WPI-IFReC), Osaka University
Dr. Akira is a distinguished and highly cited professor at the Department of Host Defense, Osaka University, Japan. He has made ground-breaking discoveries in the field of immunology, especially in the area of innate host defense mechanisms. Besides being one of the world’s most-cited scientists, in 2006 and 2007, Dr. Akira was recognized as the scientist who had published the greatest number of “Hot Papers” over the preceding two years. He is the recipient of several international awards, including the Robert Koch Prize and the William B. Coley Award. Among his greatest discoveries is the demonstration, through the ablation of toll-like receptor (TLR) genes, that TLRs recognize a discrete collection of molecules of microbial origin, and later the RNA helicases, RIG-I (retinoic-acid-inducible protein I) and MDA5 (melanoma differentiation-associated protein 5). All molecules belong to the pattern recognition receptors, which detect intruding pathogens and initiate anti-microbial responses in the host.