Thank you to those who attended the Viruses of Microbes 2024 held 15-19 July 2024 in Cairns, Queensland, Australia.

This series of biannual conferences is dedicated to the advancement of the fields of viruses of microorganisms, including bacteriophages (or phages, the viruses of bacteria), archaeal viruses, and viruses of microbial eukaryotes.

The VoM 2024 meeting was a five-day scientific conference that ran from the 15th-19th of July, 2024. The theme for VoM 2024 was ‘Expanding our viral frontiers’, which references both the rapid expansion we are witnessing within our field, along with the expansion of the VoM meeting outside of Europe for the very first time.

Our meeting was held at the Cairns Convention Centre in the tropical tourist destination of Cairns, Australia. Situated on the shore of the Great Barrier Reef and surrounded by the Daintree Rainforest, Cairns is a stunning location to host a scientific conference.

The meeting highlighted the most recent advances in microbial virus research and applications. It was of interest to a wide-ranging audience, interested in both the fundamental and applied research, organised into the following topics:

  • Ecology and evolution of microbial viruses
  • Virus-host interactions
  • Phage therapy
  • Viral structure and function
  • Bioinformatics and AI applications
  • Archaeal and Eukaryotic viruses
  • Microbiome and systems virology
  • Bacterial immune systems and viral defence
  • Synthetic virology
  • Early-Career Researcher (ECR) spotlight session

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Organising Committee


Associate Professor Jeremy J. Barr
Monash University
Meeting Co-Chair


Professor Ruby Lin
Phage Australia | Westmead Institute for Medical Research
Meeting Co-Chair

Dr Lucy Furfaro
University of Western Australia

Associate Professor Heather Hendrickson
University of Canterbury, New Zealand

Dr Paul Jaschke
Macquarie University

Associate Professor Anthony Kicic
Telethon Kids Institute

Dr Stephanie Lynch
Westmead Institute for Medical Research

Dr Sandra Morales
Phage Consulting


Dr Aleksandra Petrovic Fabijan
Westmead Institute for Medical Research


Associate Professor Steve Petrovski
LaTrobe University


Scientific Program Committee

  • Evelien Adriaenssen, Quadram Institute, UK
  • Joana Azeredo, University of Minho, Portugal
  • Paul Bollyky, Stanford University, USA
  • Corina Brussaard, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research
  • Martha Clokie, Leicester University, UK
  • Krystyna Dabrowska, Hirszfeld Institute, Poland
  • Rob Edwards, Flinders University, Australia
  • Peter Fineran, University of Otago, New Zealand
  • Graham Hatfull, University of Pittsburgh, USA
  • Phil Hugenholtz, University of Queensland, Australia
  • Britt Koskella, University of California, Berkeley, USA
  • Mart Krupovic, Pasteur Institute, France
  • Ipek Kurtboke, University of Sunshine Coast, Australia
  • Yingfei Ma, Centre for Synthetic Microbiome, Shenzhen, China
  • Ramesh Nachimuthu, Vellore Institute of Technology, India
  • Rotem Sorek, Weizmann Institute, Israel
  • Alexander Sulakvelidze, Intralytix, USA


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