November 6, 2025
The ACREME 2025 Annual Meeting was held on 13-14 October 2025 in Melbourne. It was an event where the members gather and exchange updates on the ACREME programme, the projects and collaborations that fell under the ACREME theme, and the priorities and strategies in research for malaria elimination in the Asia-Pacific. I had the privilege to attend the meeting, courtesy of the ACREME MASTER-MAP Travel and Training Award. I am a member of the ACREME network from Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin, and was part of the meeting’s committee this year.
In the first day of the meeting, high-level presentations regarding ACREME’s overview and overall update was given, followed by three presentations outlining ACREME’s themes (Track, Prevent, Treat) and reviewing the ongoing projects that were relevant to each theme. There was also a panel discussion on the research priorities and research impact for malaria elimination in the Asia-Pacific. The last session focused on the ACREME seed grant, which include updates on the projects of past and current seed grant awardee.
On the second day, the first session was an interactive refresher on ACREME’s professional development scheme: what schemes were available and there was a discussion on what schemes would be interesting and necessary to have in the future to support the professional development of the members, especially EMCRs. This session was followed by a career panel, where panellists with rather unconventional career paths talked about their journeys, successes, and the benefits risk-taking. The final session of the meeting was an update session from a couple of specific major projects, which include a comparison of the cost-effectiveness of several different P. vivax malaria treatment regimens with and without G6PD deficiency testing, a clinical trial on the effectiveness of tafenoquine to prevent relapse when combined with different types of schizontocides, an evaluation of personal protection packages for reducing residual malaria transmission, and an update presentation from the Malaria Atlas Project.
Overall, attending the meeting was an enriching experience for me. It gave me the opportunity to receive academic updates firsthand, and engage with investigators from other ACREME-affiliated institutions. As an EMCR and recent PhD graduate, staying informed about the most recent projects from other ACREME-affiliated institutions, as well as where the research gaps and priorities lay, was very valuable for me to plan and envision my future endeavours. I also had the chance to meet a collaborator face-to-face to discuss our ongoing collaboration, and reunite with a couple of colleagues from my time as a masters student in Burnet Institute.
