Chemelot InSciTe unites an international community of R&D and businesses at their annual meetings to share know-how, expertise and experience. Their 4th annual meeting ‘Accelerating Results’ at 8 and 9 October attracted no less than 155 participants and provided an excellent platform for their young researchers to report about the progress and outcome of the InSciTe research projects. To encourage them, the best poster and best presentation were being awarded. Brightlands Chemelot Campus generously sponsored these Awards, which were handed out by Marc van Doorn in the closing award ceremony.
Best presentation award goes to Maria Pastrama for her presentation: ‘A novel implant to address the treatment gap for middle-aged patients with focal cartilage defects’.
Maria Pastrama is a postdoctoral researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology and involved in the InSciTe project ‘SyCaP’(New implant matches natural cartilage).
Best poster award goes to Jarno Wolters for his poster(pitch): ‘An update on a drug delivery system for glaucoma filtration surgery’.
Jarno Wolters is a postdoctoral researcher at the University Eye Clinic Maastricht/MUMC+ and involved in the InSciTe project ‘SEAMS’ (Making glaucoma surgery simpler and safer).
The young talents already have plans how to spend the award money of €500
Maria: ‘First of all, I will share some vlaai with my research group and the SyCaP project members J Then I will pay for my next Dutch course at TU/e.
Jarno: ‘Most likely I intend to spend the award money for a nice holiday, in particular my honeymoon next year.’
What do they find most remarkable at InSciTe’s annual meetings and how does it help them going forward with your work?
Maria: ‘I find it very interesting to hear about all the different projects and see how, although the topics are so different, we sometimes all have similar questions or run into the same issues. I think talking about those questions and issues with other people that face them helps my work a lot.’
Jarno: ‘InSciTe’s annual meeting provides the opportunity for us as InSciTe project members to discuss the ideas and progress in your project with others. It also enables us and the participants in other projects to learn from each other. It is a great joy to see so many project members of the different InSciTe projects come together with external speakers in these 2 days to pave the way towards a market ready product.’
Which presentation had the most impact on them and why?
Jarno: ‘The Keynote Lecture of medical illustrator Rogier Trompert on 9 October had a lot of impact on me, since he managed to combine two of his interests (art and life science) in his work as a medical illustrator. I have been working with Rogier for my project SEAMS and it strikes me to see how he knows to transform complex matters into simple illustrations, which are very useful for us as researchers to use in presentations about our work.’
Maria: ‘The presentation that had the most impact on me was the one on the OCDC project by Prof. Rudy Nuijts. He presented the steps in the evolution of the design of the ocular coil in a ‘’suspenseful’’ way, so that I found myself asking after each slide ‘’And then what happened?’’ It was also a great example how feedback from practice and experiments is essential in product design.’
