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Ella Green from the Robinson Research Institute’s Reproductive Immunology Research Group attended the International Congress of Immunology in Melbourne and its satellite symposium Inflammation in Reproduction, Pregnancy and Development (IRPD) in Cairns in August 2016.

Ella presented her research on Regulatory T cell abundance and phenotype in pregnancy – a novel role for progesterone potentially independent of nuclear progesterone receptor (ICI) and Progesterone signalling regulates Treg cell phenotype and controls pregnancy success concurrentlyÌý(±õ¸é±Ê¶Ù).

This is what Ella had to say about her experience:

What was a highlight of the conference?

Meeting other researchers in similar fields and forming potential collaborations with them was a highlight. Another highlight was hearing about new research from the leaders in the field whose papers I constantly read and refer to.

Did you meet any researchers or collaborators of significance? Why are they important to your work?

Ken Beagley: Ken uses a model of Chlamydia infection in his work that will be useful for my project. He has agreed to assist us with using this model and may come and visit the RRI in the coming months.

Shokrollah Elahi: Shokrollah works on neonatal immunology, which I find an interesting area of work that has similarities to my research. He has offered me to spend some time in his laboratory at the University of Alberta, Canada.

How will the experience support you and your research going forward?

Attending these conferences was an extremely valuable experience for me. I learned about new, exciting research which sparked ideas of my own for future research. I gained insight into certain techniques and how to apply them to my work. I got to present my work to others which sparked some valuable and interesting conversation, and finally the opportunity to network with my peers and potential collaborators was extremely useful.

What was the most exciting thing you learned/experienced at the Conference?

The most exciting thing I experienced was the very first session at the IRPD conference, in which Richard Flavell, a Professor at Yale and a leader in the field of Immunology, gave a fascinating talk on long non coding RNAs and their role in gene regulation.

What was the most interesting or unexpected moment of your travel?

It was unexpected to find many talks unrelated to my area of research really interesting.