IVI’s 5-day vaccinology training starts in Seoul, Sweden < Bio < 그리본문
The International Vaccine Institute (IVI) is hosting its 21st International Five-Day Vaccinology Course at the SNU Faculty House Convention Center which will run until Friday this week.
IVI’s director general, Dr. Jerome Kim, said the trainees needed to focus on moving vaccines from “need” to “impact” and urged them to keep the message in mind throughout the program and when they return home, in his opening remarks at the SNU Faculty House Convention Center on Monday .
In February, WHO designated IVI as a global biohub.
IVI’s flagship training program supports its mission to make vaccines accessible to global health by building capacity in vaccinology and promoting vaccine sustainability in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
The vaccinology course drew 191 participants from Korea and overseas, and 11 additional invited fellows who will present their poster presentations on the final day.
IVI’s vaccinology course functions for the first time in a hybrid format with approximately 20 participants in Sweden, approximately 100 participants on site in Seoul and 100 IVI staff participating remotely on YouTube.
A participant from Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Nigeria said: “I am looking forward to learning more about observational studies and epidemiology in particular as this is my current focus.” Being able to attend in person, she expressed her plan to take advantage of the networking sessions to establish new research collaborations for her institution back home.
Another participant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said, “I want to gain a better understanding of vaccines so that I can participate more actively and help with vaccine-related projects at the foundation.”
Anders Nordström, ambassador for global health in Sweden offered his congratulations and said: “Vaccines give us a way to trick the immune system and provide protection to prevent public health disasters.” Anna Norrby-Teglund, representing Karolinska Institutet, also expressed her gratitude to IVI and said: “We are very happy to collaborate with IVI for this course as one of the largest medical centers for research and education in Sweden.”
According to IVI, the rest of the course will include lectures by IVI staff and other international experts from pharmaceutical companies such as BioNTech and Moderna, well-known universities such as John’s Hopkins and Baylor College of Medicine in addition to site visits to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) and CHA Global Clinical Trials Centre.
Specifically, the vaccinology course will cover a wide range of topics starting with a basic immunology background and later progressing to more technical seminars including the vaccine development process from a laboratory, clinical and licensing perspective, epidemiological analysis, infectious disease modeling and more.
Over 20 years, this course has trained approximately 5,000 vaccine specialists from LMICs worldwide, fostering collaborative research and public health partnerships.