"Day of Immunology 2010: Make it your day !"

Day of Immunology 2010: Make it your day ! For five years now, the Day of Immunology organized by the EFIS and celebrated on April 29th is the occasion to gather scientists from around the world to bring awareness of immunology to the public. 2010 has been declared by the United Nations International Year of Biodiversity. This will give a tint to the upcoming Day of Immunology, and inspire you to express the diversity of your ideas to spread the knowledge to the general public. Whether at school, on TV, internet or with books or debates… every initiative to promote the field is welcome. The best projects are rewarded and last year, among the projects in competition, two short cuts received a prize for their fresh spirit: a fiction “The Immunology Knight”, a parody of the superhero Batman which received a tremendous welcome from the scientific community, and a cartoon “Our battles” depicting the inside war against pathogens, specially designed for children. All that can be seen and downloaded on the website www.immunology-info.org. Each year also, the EFIS takes initiatives to provide tools for everyone. In 2009, we translated and distributed a book targeting lay people:“Your amazing Immune System - How it protects your body” from Japanese to English. A tremendous success indeed: we gave the book away to the last copy! Hopefully the English version is available on the website mentioned above. And to those interested, we will shortly propose our help to translate this book into other languages. Building tools for everyone To pursue this direction for 2010, the EFIS board decided to engage the translation of the shortcut “The Immunology Knight” in the languages of the 31 countries of the EFIS. This will be at your disposal on April 29 this year. You will all be most welcome to download these versions, spread the movie, and use it freely to promote immunology. This is our way to celebrate our diversity. And to complete our “arsenal” we are currently working on an ambitious and entertaining public website! We should give you some update very soon. But more importantly, we welcome you to make this Day of Immunology your day, to launch activities, new initiatives, to give this event a much greater dimension and help enhance awareness of immunology, more than ever needed after the last “flu” months. Because old-fashioned teaching methods sometimes miss the point, we wish you to embrace creativity, and to prove the public that immunology can be fun after all! Catherine Sautès-Fridman President of EFIS More info to participate to the Day of Immunology 2010 on www.dayofimmunology.org To see the awarded projects of 2009 go on www.immunology-info.org