December 2017

Two PhD students from the Institute for Animal Breeding and Genetics of the Vetmeduni Vienna were awarded session prizes at the 2017 annual conference of the Austrian Society for Allergology and Immunology (ÖGAI). Natalija Simonovic won a prize for her oral presentation “Tyrosine kinase 2 (TYK2) regulates NK cell function by cell-intrinsic and –extrinsic mechanisms” and Andrea Pölzl received the prize for the poster "Tyrosine kinase 2 (TYK2) enables sustained IL-1beta production through the upregulation of caspase-11 during endotoxemia".

The annual meeting of the ÖGAI, which took place in Vienna from November 23^th to 25^th 2017, focused on Immunotherapy. In six independent sessions, different scientific contributions and perspectives on this topic were presented and discussed in lectures and poster presentations by national and international researchers. The ÖGAI was founded in 1970 and is a platform for researchers in Austria who are scientifically active in this scientific field. 

On December 13^th 2017, the Rectorate awarded the most successful researchers of the year with the internal science awards of the Vetmeduni Vienna. Veronika Sexl (Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology) and Mathias Müller (Institute of Animal Breeding and Genetics) won the prize for “major project” for successfully assuring grants from the European Research Council (ERC) and the FWF Special Research Program, respectively.

Each year, the Rectorate of Vetmeduni Vienna honors scientists for “invention of the year”, “most cited scientist”, “highest third-party funding” and the "major project of the year" with internal science prizes. The prizes were awarded according to the different career stage, in clinical and non-clinical categories, as well as in two age groups (younger than 35 years and older than 35 years). Pictures of the event can be found here.

On November 30^th 2017, Veronika Sexl, Head of the Institute for Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Vetmeduni Vienna, was awarded the City of Vienna Prize (Preis Stadt Wien) in the Medical Sciences category for her life's work. Veronika Sexl was honored in the field of medicine for her outstanding performance during her career. In this video, the researcher talks about her career and what science is for her.

The City of Vienna Prizes are awarded every year in a wide variety of areas. An independent jury of experts decides annually on the awarding of prizes, which are endowed with 8,000 euros each. The City Councillor for Culture, Andreas Mailath-Pokorny, awarded the City of Vienna 2017 Prizes in eight categories. The full list of awardees can be found here.

Dagmar Gotthardt was awarded the Ursula and Fritz Melchers Prize for best dissertation at annual conference of The Austrian Society for Allergology and Immunology (ÖGAI) on November 24^th 2017. She completed her PhD in 2016 at the Institute for Pharmacology and Toxicology at Vetmeduni Vienna with the PhD dissertation "The Role of STAT3 and STAT5 in murine Natural Killer Cells". This prize sums to others that the researcher received during her studies.

Dagmar was able to show that NK cells not only kill tumour cells, but can also promote tumour growth in certain circumstances. She identified STAT5 as the central switch in this decision. Dagmar was able to contribute to a total of 14 publications; she was the first author in 4 publications. The ÖGAI dissertation prizes are awarded for PhD dissertations with a scientifically outstanding content in the field of allergology or immunology. The first prize is donated by Ursula and Fritz Melchers in the amount of 1,500€.