Congratulations Carolyn!

Congratulations to Dr. Carolyn Cohen for receiving the prestigious Harnessing Airway Immunity for Next-Gen Vaccines post-doc poster prize, awarded by the Science Cluster of the Novo Nordisk Foundation!

This recognition was presented during the 32nd Science Cluster Conference, held from 22–26 September 2025 in Denmark, which brought together different stakeholders in airway immunology and vaccine development, including current and past HKU-Pasteur PhD students Ms Janice Jia, Dr Maireid Bull and Dr Akhee Jahan. The conference focused on the transformative potential of airway-targeted immune responses to revolutionize how we prevent respiratory infectious diseases.

Carolyn's poster "First SARS-CoV-2 infection elicits antibodies with higher FcR engagement and avidity in children than adults" explored the systemic antibody immune response in children compared to adults, finding that adults' but not children's response may be driven by cross-reactive immune response to common cold coronaviruses. The work is also recently published in Nature Communications.