Biosciences PhD Student Wins Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Special Award for Attending International Congress

Mrs Siti Hasmah Mohtar, who is the PhD student under the supervision of Dr Sandy Loh in the School of Biosciences has been selected by the International Society for Vaccines (ISV) as one of the developing country participants to receive waiver of the registration fee (USD 775) at the 6^th Vaccine and ISV Annual Global Congress to be held in Shanghai on October 14-16, 2012. The funding of this financial support was generously provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Siti is very privileged as the selection of this special award was extremely competitive and the final decision was based on the international Top 22 scores out of all submitted abstracts reviewed by the Scientific Committee. The ISV committee has invited her to attend the ISV Annual General Members' Meeting on October 15, 2012 and she will be presented with a special certificate for this BMGF award. In addition, the Executive Board of ISV has also granted Siti with one-year free ISV membership which is equivalent to USD 100. Among many benefits as an ISV member, Siti will enjoy the free online access of entire published issues of journal Vaccine in its 30 years' history. Her winning title was “Immunogenicity of polyacrylamide gel purified VP2 protein expressed via chimeric viral transcripts infection strategy in Nicotiana benthamiana against the highly virulent Infectious Bursal Disease Virus (hvIBDV)”.