First poster prize: Katharina Ost won the award for the best poster at the First Poster Symposium of SP BioSciences

TToday saw the first Poster Symposium of our Structured Doctoral Programme BioSciences, fully organised by the doctoral candidates themselves, for themselves, supported by Dr.Uschi Windmüller, the Scientific Coordinator of the programme who has lots of experience in organising such events. The main stage, of course, had the posters, and they were heavily beleaguered, with intense discussions going on all through the afternoon. There were drinks and a buffet, locally sponsored, and there was a key note speaker who reported on his career as a self-made web journalist,Cedric Engels, who has launched one of the most renowned scientific blogs in German language. One of the highlights of the day was the selection of the three winners of the poster awards, voted for by all doctoral candidates present. And the winner of the first price was: Katharina Ost! She had done her Master thesis in our group, in collaboration with Prof. Arthur Ram from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, aiming to use the fungus Aspergillus niger as a eukaryotic expression system for some of our difficult to express enzymes. Afterwards, she was recruited by our alumna Prof. Dr.Mareike Dirks-Hofmeister at the University of Applied Sciences of Osnabrück where she is pursuing her doctoral project on improving A. niger as an expression system for recombinant proteins.