ISOPOL Meeting in Toronto

I spent most of last week in Toronto, Canada at the 20th International Symposium on Problems of Listeria and Listeriosis.  I was an invited speaker, and I gave the very last talk of the conference!  Fortunately, there was a vote being held after my talk, so everyone stuck around. :-)

ISOPOL is held every three years, and at each meeting brave volunteers in the field offer to host the next meeting.  This time there were three options to choose from: Yuelan Yin from Yangzhou University in China, Nancy Freitag from University of Illinois in Chicago, and Keith Ireton from University of Otago in New Zealand.  After the entire group of attendees voted, the next destination for ISOPOL 2022 will be....New Zealand!

John Brummell and Jeff Farber really did a great job of hosting this year's meeting in Toronto.  I was able to reconnect with many friends in the field, and met quite a few new people as well. The venue at the the Peter Gilgan Centre for Research and Learning at the Hospital for Sick Kids was top notch, and the the food at the meeting, the Speaker's banquet at Canoe and the Gala Dinner at the Royal Ontario Museum were all great. The variety of talks we heard throughout the conference, from epidemiological details on the recent polony outbreak in South Africa to the latest cell biology discoveries using Listeria as a tool were fantastic.  I'm looking forward to attending the next meeting in New Zealand!