Launch of the Wolfson Bob Sim Uruguay Initiative

This supports interaction and exchange between Wolfson students, postdocs and fellows in biochemistry, immunology and other biological or biomedical sciences, and their counterparts in Uruguay. The initiative is named in honour of Professor Robert ‘Bob’ Sim (GS 1973, DPhil Biochemistry) and made possible by the generous support of his family.

The initiative offers grants for recipients to travel from Oxford to Uruguay to meet with and discuss their research with their Uruguayan counterparts, and/or to give seminar or conference papers. It also offers grants for recipients from Uruguay to visit Wolfson as Visiting Scholars.

The Wolfson Bob Sim Uruguay initiative strengthens Wolfson’s connections with South America and with Uruguay in particular, where immunologists have developed a global reputation for their work investigating parasitic infections and echinococcus.

A symposium over the weekend of 9 and 10 April brought expert immunologists from across the world to Oxford to launch the initiative. His Excellency Mr Cesar Eneas Rodriguez Zavalla, Uruguayan Ambassador to the Court of St James’s, was guest of honour at a dinner in College on 9 April.

Bob Sim (1951-2021) was a leading research scientist in the MRC Immunochemistry Unit, headed by Nobel laureate Rodney Porter. He held appointments at the universities of Oxford, Leicester, Brunel and Kingston, and at the Centre d’Etudes Nucleaires de Grenoble. He published more than 350 scientific papers and several books, and supervised over 30 doctoral students, including several from Uruguay who were affiliated to Wolfson.  For many years Bob taught on Oxford’s highly successful MSc in Integrated Immunology, directed by Wolfson Emeritus Fellow Jon Austyn. Bob Sim collaborated widely across the globe and for his role in the development of immunology in Uruguay was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Universidad de la República de Uruguay in 2017.

For further details, including how to apply to the initiative, please contact Christina Redfield, Professor of Molecular Biophysics at Oxford University, or Alvaro Diaz, Professor of Immunology at the Universidad de la República de Uruguay.