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 24th 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€.

Two students from Vetmeduni Vienna were awarded presentation prizes at the joint symposium of the PhD programs “Inflammation and Immunity” and “Molecular, Cellular and Clinical Allergology”. This was the second edition of this joint symposium, this year with the title "Together one step further". It happened on September 25th and 26th 2017 at the Medical University of Vienna.

Daniela Prinz from the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology won the best lecture by the students for the oral presentation "NKG2D: friend or foe in NK cell mediated tumour surveillance". Ana Puga from the Institute of Animal Breeding and Genetics won the best poster award with the work "The role of STAT1 isoforms in Th cell differentiation and CD4+ T cell-mediated diseases".