At the annual event at the Med Uni Vienna, two awards went to scientists from LBI Trauma: Ara Hacobian made first place with his contribution to the ScienceArt Competition, and Marian Fürsatz won a Best Poster Award.

Ara Hacobian’s work is titled “Awareness”. It shows the Venus of Willendorf after a mastectomy. Through the combination of two well-known impressions – the famous Venus with its female forms and the meaningful surgical suture – the artist managed to create an image that is both simple and memorable. He was able to wow both the audience and the jury. Around 5,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year in Austria. Early detection can provide patients with a decisive advantage, as early treatment is less aggressive and more successful. With his image, Hacobian wants to raise awareness for breast cancer.

Marian Fürsatz presented his research on pellet cultures for cartilage differentiation at the symposium. Micromass pellets simulate the three dimensional environment found in native cartilage and thus are an effective and widely used in vitro test system in cartilage research. Usually each single pellet is created separately, which requires a great deal of time and material. On his poster “An inducer system of autonomous pellet formation for chondrogenic differentiation”, Fürsatz presents a system for the generation of self-forming pellets. By reducing the time and effort to generate a large number of pellets, it may one day enable high throughput cartilage research.