Dr. Giovanna Barba-Spaeth at the forefront of international scientific outreach

One of the core missions of the Yellow4FLAVI consortium is to ensure that its science reaches beyond the laboratory — into the hands of clinicians, researchers, and the scientists of tomorrow. As we reflect on a rich year of scientific outreach within the consortium, Dr. Giovanna Barba-Spaeth (Institut Pasteur), Coordinator, has been contributing as an invited speaker to two major international scientific events.

🇬🇷 Keynote Lecture — ESCV 2025, Thessaloniki

Giovanna was invited to deliver a keynote lecture at the European Society for Clinical Virology Annual Meeting (ESCV 2025), held in Thessaloniki, Greece. Her presentation, "Flaviviruses immunological crosstalk: the impact of vaccination", addressed one of the most pressing questions in flavivirus biology to a broad European audience of clinicians, virologists, and public health researchers. Being selected as a keynote speaker at ESCV reflects both the quality and the relevance of the work carried out within the Yellow4FLAVI consortium.

🧬 Invited Lecture — EMBO Practical Course on RNA Viruses (February 2026)

Giovanna was also invited as a lecturer at the EMBO Practical Course on RNA Viruses held in Faridabad, India, one of Europe's most prestigious training programmes for early-career scientists. Her lecture — "Flavivirus immunological crosstalk: the impact on vaccination" — introduced the next generation of virologists to the complexity of cross-reactive immunity between flaviviruses and its critical implications for vaccine development.

A Consistent and Urgent Scientific Message

Across both events and audiences, Dr. Giovanna Barba-Spaeth carried the same core scientific message: flaviviruses do not interact with the immune system in isolation. Prior exposure — whether through infection or vaccination — with one flavivirus can profoundly shape the immune response to another. Understanding this immunological crosstalk is not just a fundamental science question; it is a critical lever for designing safer, more effective vaccines. This is precisely what Yellow4FLAVI is built to address. 🦟