An exhibition with 130 posters, numerous exciting lectures, a panel discussion in the style of a talk show and awards for special research achievements - this and much more awaited the participants at the Research Day of the Faculty of Health. Here they had the chance to learn about the diverse scientific projects at the Faculty, to discuss them and to develop new ideas and collaborations.

Strengthening research

After the official welcome by Prof. Dr. Petra Thürmann, Vice President for Research at UW/H, and Prof. Dr. Stefan Zimmer for the Dean's Office of the Faculty, the new Vice Dean for Research, Prof. Florian Kreppel, led the participants through the day. In his speech, he gave a brief overview of the state of research at the faculty and outlined the essential tasks for 2023. From all the speeches, it became clear how significant research really is for the UW/H and that strengthening it in a planned manner is one of the essential tasks.

Research needs money - therefore, the day also included tips from faculty members who had been particularly successful in obtaining third-party funding in the past year. This encouraged young researchers and students in particular to realize their project ideas and acquire research funding. In another plenary session, Prof. Ulrich Weger introduced the Institute for First-Person Research (IFPF).

The topic of the panel discussion, moderated by Prof. Dr. Sven Meister, was "Tasks and opportunities of digitalization in the health sciences". Participants from the fields of clinical pharmacology (Prof. Petra Thürmann), internal medicine and cardiology (PD Dr. Nadine Abanador-Kamper), management and innovation in healthcare (Prof. Sabine Bohnet-Joschko), multiprofessional healthcare for the chronically ill (Jun.-Prof. Daniela Schmitz) and Psychology and Psychotherapy (Prof. Thomas Ostermann) had an in-depth exchange in the style of an upscale talk show, highlighting the essential aspects of the topic for research, teaching and the future.

Awarding of publication and doctoral prizes

And again this year, the best scientific publication of 2022 was honored with the "Witten's First" publication award. Paula Wolters was awarded for her publication "Lipid transfer protein allergy: characterization and comparison to birch-related food allergy " in the "Journal of the German Dermatological Society".

The doctoral prize "Dr. med." was awarded to Dr. Dr. Katharina Fetz for her work "Do patients of integrative anthroposophic pediatric inpatient departments differ? Comparative analysis to all pediatric inpatients in Germany considering demographic and clinical characteristics".

The Doctoral Prize in Dentistry - donated by the Förderverein für Zahnmedizin an der UW/H e.V. - was awarded to Dr. David Reinhart for his work "Influence of the use of erythritol powder (^AirFlow® Plus powder - EMS) by means of ^AirFlow® on the roughness and abrasiveness of various restorative materials - an in vitro study".

The prize for the best short presentation was awarded to Ms. Luca Oude Hengel from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine with the topic "Characterization of oncolytic adenoviruses armed with an expression cassette for SIRPα-Fc to block cancer cell's immune checkpoint CD47 ".

The poster award went to Ms. Maximiliane Finkbeiner for her research project "Antitumor T cell immunity during Measles Virus Oncolysis", performed at the Department of Virology and Microbiology, Chair of Experimental Virology.

The next Research Day is already being planned and will take place in January 2024.