Talented AllerGen trainee to meet Nobel Laureates

AllerGen trainee and gut microbiome researcher Dr. Meghan Azad has been selected to attend a prestigious week-long meeting that unites more than 30 Nobel Prize winners with 600 of the world’s brightest young scientists.

Dr. Meghan Azad

The 64th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting (Physiology or Medicine) will be held June 29 – July 4, 2014, in Lindau, Germany. The annual event—the only one of its kind in the world—provides a unique opportunity for the intercultural and intergenerational exchange of knowledge and ideas between Nobel Laureates in chemistry, physiology, medicine and physics, and talented young scientists from across the globe.

“I am so excited to be given the opportunity to ‘rub shoulders’ with these prestigious scientists. Can you imagine brainstorming with a Nobel Prize winner, let alone 30 of them, for an entire week? It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” says Dr. Azad.

Dr. Azad’s research uses samples from AllerGen’s Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) Study to investigate the impact of antibiotics, breastfeeding and environmental factors on infant gut microbiota and the subsequent development of allergic disease. Dr. Azad is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alberta under the supervision of AllerGen researcher Dr. Anita Kozyrskyj. She was named a Banting Post-doctoral Fellow in September 2013.

The 2014 Nobel Laureate Meeting meeting will focus on the topics of physiology or medicine, and allow Nobel Prize winners and young scientists to discuss topics such as global health, the challenges to medical care in developing countries and future research approaches to medicine.