Integrating chemistry, engineering and biology to create the next generation of vaccines
Date: 30 March 2026
Location: Cambridge, UK
Deadline for registration, including abstract submission: 30 January 2026
About the event:
Themes and topics:
This event aims to bring together physical scientists and life scientists to devise new approaches to vaccines that could have great impact on human and animal health. The symposium will be hosted in the beautiful and historic Queens’ College in the centre of Cambridge. Through talks and posters and discussions, we will consider some of the latest approaches to create effective vaccines, exchange ideas, and nucleate collaborations to overcome existing barriers. The latest vaccines have depended upon advances in areas including nanotechnology, lipid/carbohydrate/nucleic acid modification, genomics, computational design, analytical chemistry and atomic resolution structural analysis. We intend for the event to be welcoming to life scientists without a background in physical sciences, as well as to physical scientists with no background knowledge of the immune system or vaccines but who have an interest to explore possible applications of their research. The event is organised through RSC Biotechnology Group, in partnership with Cambridge University Engineering Biology Interdisciplinary Research Centre.
Confirmed Speakers so far:
Pietro Cicuta, Department of Physics, University of Cambridge
Max Crispin, Institute for Life Sciences, University of Southampton
Dame Sarah Gilbert, Pandemic Sciences Institute, University of Oxford
Neil King, Institute for Protein Design, University of Washington
Anne Osbourn, John Innes Centre
Asel Sartbaeva, Department of Chemistry, University of Bath