Overview
This event is led by Microbiology Horizons and is the third instalment of a webinar series. Each webinar explores a different perspective on the rapidly evolving role of artificial intelligence in microbiology, covering cutting-edge research, emerging methods, and real-world applications across policy, public health, and industry. Every session wraps up with an interactive Q&A, ensuring your questions are addressed. To find out more about our new journal, visit Microbiology Horizons.
This session will take place on 7 December at 14:00-15:30 GMT
Spotlight on AI in microbiology—Predicting Viral Evolution to Accelerate Vaccine and Therapeutic Design
With guest speaker Noor Youssef and a panel comprising Microbiology Horizons editors.
Chaired by the Editor-in-Chief of Microbiology Horizons, Tania Dottorini (King's College London, UK).
Noor Youssef is an Assistant Professor in the Molecular Genetics Dept at the University of Toronto. Her work centers on viral evolution and the development of AI-driven tools to guide vaccine and therapeutic design, with a broader goal of building predictive frameworks that can inform real-world health decisions. She received her PhD in computational biology from Dalhousie University, where she focused on mechanistic models of evolution, and was the Scientific Lead of Predictive Modeling in the Marks Lab at Harvard Medical School.
Noor Youssef's LinkedIn, recent publications, X and webpage.
The Spotlight Series is an online event series focusing on content published across the Society’s publishing portfolio and other topics of relevance to our journals and to our authors. Spotlighting interesting studies, emerging and hot topics, and innovative and exciting research, these short online events will feature authors and editors from our publishing portfolio as speakers, giving unique insight into the stories behind the science.
To respect all our delegates' privacy, we request that you do not take screen grabs, photos, or record any of the content, names, people, and research during this webinar. We also remind everyone attending our events that some people may feel uncomfortable with their name, image, or research being posted to social media platforms. A recording of the event will be made available to Microbiology Society members shortly afterwards.
Abstract
Talk Title: Predicting Viral Evolution to Accelerate Vaccine and Therapeutic Design
Viruses have an enormous impact on humanity, causing billions of deaths and trillions of dollars in economic losses. Yet our responses to viral threats have largely been, and continue to be, reactive. We wait for a virus to spill over into humans, evolve within individuals, and ultimately spread across the global population before acting. My research aims to build a proactive framework for responding to viral threats aimed at identifying potential dangers before they cause their first human infection and developing medical countermeasures (e.g., vaccines and therapeutic antibodies) before widespread transmission occurs. Achieving this goal depends on three key pillars: Can we predict how viruses will evolve? Can we anticipate how those changes will affect immune recognition and protection? And how can we use this knowledge to design vaccines and therapeutics that protect against both current and future viral diversity? In this seminar, I will highlight how my work has made progress on each of these fronts and lay out a vision for how the remaining gaps can be closed. Together, these advances point toward a future in which we are no longer chasing viruses but staying ahead of them.
Registration
This event is free to members, with a small fee of £10 for non-member attendees.
Technology
All seminars will be run via Zoom, a link for which will be sent to you via email prior to the meeting. Please ensure you have updated to the latest version of the Zoom desktop or mobile application (version 5.3 or higher is recommended). Please note all times listed are in UK time.
To respect all our delegates' privacy, we request that you do not take screen grabs, photos, or record any of the content, names, people, and research during this webinar. We also remind everyone attending our events that some people may feel uncomfortable with their name, image, or research being posted to social media platforms. A recording of the event will be made available to Microbiology Society members shortly afterwards.