Marcin Osuchowski & Cellectric-Biosciences receive “1000 Ideas” funding
Novel, original research ideas involve high risk, require courage and are often difficult to implement. For this reason, the Austrian Science Fund FWF has launched the 1000 Ideas Programme to fund creative, forward-looking projects. 20 projects are supported with funds totalling 3 million euros. One of them was granted to Marcin Osuchowski, Co-director and head of Intensive Care Research at LBI Trauma, and a collaborating team from Cellectric-Biosciences, a start-up led by Terje Wimberger and Klemens Wassermann.
The team convinced the jury with their idea for a new approach to faster detection of infection during bacterial sepsis. Using custom-made bio-electrodynamic filters and enzymatic recognition, they aim to significantly accelerate diagnosis from 24-72 hours to approximately 6 hours in the future. The method in development is many times cheaper than molecular-biological methods, which currently represent the only possibility for such rapid detection, and could therefore be used more widely in practice.
The 1000 Ideas Programme stands for unconventional hypotheses that go beyond the scientific norm and have potential for innovation. This year, 20 out of more than 180 applications were chosen. During the fully anonymized selection, the jury focused not only on scientific excellence but also on originality and the “courage to fail”. The funded research projects move within a broad spectrum – from topics such as horn scale chronology to a fountain of youth for the human brain.