ESWI actively encourages the careers of promising influenza researchers. As part of that endeavour it disseminates awards for the best oral and the best poster presentation by a young scientist at its triennial ESWI Influenza Conferences.

During the recent  6th ESWI Influenza Conference in Riga, session chairs and co-chairs had been asked to evaluate Young Scientists contributions and from the collected scores, two laureates have been selected:

• Best Oral Presentation Award 2017 goes to Bernadeta Dadonaite, University of Oxford, for her talk entitled “Analysis of the higher order RNA structures present inside the Influenza A virus genome”
• Best Poster Presentation Award 2017 goes to Carina Conceiçao, University of Edinburgh, for her poster entitled “Avian Influenza A virus budding morphology: spherical or filamentous?”

Both prize winner will receive an official certificate. They will also receive free registration, travel and accommodation for the 7th ESWI Influenza Conference in 2020. In early 2020, they will be invited to submit an abstract of their latest influenza research, which will be assessed by the Conference Programme Committee in view of selecting the speakers for the 2020 Young Scientists Plenary Session.

Congratulations to Bernadeta and Carina!