The FOCIS Centers of Excellence (FCE) is a network of 71 interdisciplinary academic medical centers that have met criteria to be designated by FOCIS as FCEs. These centers are some of the best in the world. Through the FCE network, they combine their expertise, patient populations and data for research, grants and other collaborative ventures. A focus of these centers is training and each year the centers are given the opportunity to send two trainees to participate in the FCE Fusion event.
The FCE Fusion event is an invitation-only luncheon and networking event, held the first day of the FOCIS Annual Meeting. This year’s FCE Fusion event, chaired by Megan Levings, PhD, The University of British Columbia, welcomed 30 trainees from 21 FCEs. Abstracts are submitted by all trainees and presented in poster tour format. Three abstracts were competitively selected to give oral presentations prior to the poster tours.
FCE Fusion gives trainees the opportunity to hone their presentation skills among colleagues and benefit from the feedback of the FCE Directors who are present. The poster tours were led by FCE Directors who took groups of trainees from poster to poster where they give five-minute presentations of their work and had the opportunity for group discussion and questions.
The trainees shared in the evaluations that they enjoyed the more intimate way of meeting others at the start of the Annual Meeting, getting a chance to speak to FOCIS leaders and senior PIs, and in-depth explanations of the posters and direct feedback in the group tour.
Trainee participation is limited to those who were competitively selected by their FCE Director. The participating trainees are listed below. Trainees attending FCE Fusion received FCE travel awards and complimentary FOCIS annual meeting registration to defray some of the cost of attending the events. FOCIS is pleased to extend over $25,000 in travel award support for this event.
| FCE Name | Nominee Name |
| BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute | Isaac Rosado Sanchez |
| BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute | Chad Poloni |
| Brigham and Women’s Hospital | Garrett Dunlap |
| Centre for Translational Systems Immunology | Janine Robert |
| Clinical Investigation Center in Biotherapy (CIC BT) | Orianne Cuelenaere-Bonizec |
| Columbia University | Hanane Touil |
| Columbia University | Dallin Dressman |
| Heidelberg University | Ricardo Grieshaber-Bouyer |
| Institut Pasteur | Stephen Tharshana |
| Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y Nutrición Salvador Zubirán | Sandra Romero RamÃrez |
| Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y Nutrición Salvador Zubirán | Victor Andres Sosa Hernandez |
| King’s College London | Ada Sera Kurt |
| Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg | Chiara Massa |
| Mexican Translational Immunology Group | Saul Artega Cruz |
| Northwell | Zarina Brune |
| Northwell | Willians Tambo Ayol |
| Toronto Human Immunology Network | Marieke de Korte |
| Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) | Ariadna Bartoló Ibars |
| Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) | Maria Iglesias Escudero |
| UCL Institute of Immunity and Transplantation (IIT) | Lina Petersone |
| UCL Institute of Immunity and Transplantation (IIT) | Nathalie Schmidt |
| University of California, San Francisco | Patrick Ho |
| University of California, San Francisco | Miqdad Dhariwala |
| University of California, San Francisco | Emilie Ronin |
| UiO FOCIS Center of Excellence | Markéta Chlubnová |
| University of Nantes | Nathan Provin |
| University of Pittsburg | Stephanie Grebinoski |
| Vanderbilt | Kelsey Voss |
| Vanderbilt | Lauren Walker |
| Yale University | John Pell |
