We are very pleased to share that several of our very young IOR PhD students have recently participated in international and national scientific meetings, and we are especially happy to report that many of the participating students received either a prize or a travel grant in recognition of their contributions.

At the biennial ISER26 meeting in Valencia, Alexander Hirsch PhD Student of the Paquet-Durand-Lab was awarded a travel grant for his oral presentation, “Glycolytic dysregulation in the rd10 mouse model.”

At the annual NeNa Conference for Young Neuroscientists, held in Würzburg from 16–18 September, 4 IOR PhD students received poster prizes. Katia Ihadadene (Clark-Lab) received first prize, while Irene Biju (Schwarz-Lab) and Anastasia Chikhladze (Ueffing-Lab) jointly, since they got the same scoring received second prize. In the meantime Nathalie Zgoda (Clark-Lab) received the Best Talk Award. 

Their contributions addressed different aspects of metabolism and retinal biology:

Irene Biju: “Single-cell multiplexed and targeted metabolic imaging of the retina”
Katia Ihadadene: “Impact of damaged Bruch’s membrane on RPE metabolism: metabolic analyses of in vitro iPS-RPE models”
Anastasia Chikhladze: “Investigating the effects of lifestyle-associated metabolic stress on iPSC-derived RPE cells”
Nathalie Zgoda: “The Role of Complement Opsonisation in Regulating Microglial Phagocytosis in the Retina”

These recognitions are a wonderful achievement, particularly at this early stage of their research careers, and reflect the high quality and scientific relevance of their work.

Congratulations to Alexander, Anastasia, Irene, Katia and Nathalie on these well-deserved achievements. And keep up the excellent work!