Established in 2010 in Sydney and now hosted in six cities: Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and London, JAMS is a group of microbiologists that meet once a month to chat about all things microbiology over a beverage. We’re always looking for new speakers, so if you’d like to practice a talk in a relaxed environment, contact us.
Take a stroll through our website where you can meet our team, find info on our JAMS events, read our latest blog posts, and sign up to our mailing lists so you never miss an event. There’s also a noticeboard were we post info on conferences, other events, and microbiology jobs.
JAMS was established on August 29th 2010 when three enthusiastic microbiologists (Andy Holmes, Mike Kertesz and Federico Lauro) were chatting about life and science at a microbiology conference party in Seattle. After countless cups of bubble tea, the guys formed a vision to regularly gather microbiologists from universities in Sydney to discuss science in a relaxing atmosphere. In contrast to traditional conferences running annually or once every two or three years, the JAMS idea was to blend the social and the professional and to do so frequently to build community interaction and inclusivity. This vision was actualised by Fede Lauro when just a month after, the first JAMS committee was formed, consisting of himself, Mike Manefield, Ian Paulsen, Brendan Burns, Andy Holmes and Peter Ralph. Within the following month, i.e. November 24th 2010, the first ever JAMS was held at the Australian Museum in Darlinghurst, NSW:
Fast forward to today, and the novel academic ideas exchange platform of JAMS has gotten bigger and stronger with nodes in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and London. Monthly or bi-monthly talks are conducted at each node/region with people from various backgrounds who all have one thing in common: the love for microbiology. JAMS’ motto is ‘Minima maxima sunt’, which means ‘The Small things are the Great things’.