more than 550 attendees

40 exhibitors - 7 plenary speaker - 40 invited Speaker

14 Sessions - 220 Poster - 61 Short Talks

For the sixth time running, the ÖGMBT hosted Austrias most important Life Science Meeting at the UZA1 University Campus in the nations capital city, Vienna. The former University of Economics (WU) - which is currently home to the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) - proved to be the ideal site for a conference, which for the first time aimed to break out of the rigid corset of conventional scientific meeting and offer a uniquely diverse program under this years motto:

Life Sciences meet Entrepeneurship

Throughout the last years, the Annual Meeting had already established itself as the biggest hot-spot of the national Life Science scene. The 2014 edition expanded upon the regular program of bioscientific sessions with talks and posters, with the banner Life Sciences meet Entrepeneurship creating a strong connection between research and business. The specifically designed Entrepreneurship Track was complemented by the session Science in Biotech Companies. The link between the two spheres was drawn by the LifeScience Circle, organised by LISAvienna, a scientific get-to-gether dedicated to networking and exchange.

A Network of Ideas

On the other end of the spectrum, the program was improved in scientific value and diversity by the inclusion of plentiful networking and satellite events , such as the Bioinformatics Round table and the Biophysics satellite meeting. At the same time, young scientists were approached with seminars focusing on career-oriented soft skill workshops like „How to write a paper“ by Eva Müller or „The purpose of research“ by Lukas Madl. In that way, despite the vast diversity of attendees most, if not all, interests were able to be engaged. It is not surprising, that the general feedback was positive throughout. Wolfgang Weinkum, Marketing Manager and Organiser of one of the business workshops, spoke of an "excellent event with possibility to network with a lot of key opinion leaders from biotech, academics, key universities and non-university research institutes". Accredited represantatives of the (bio-)scientific media, including Chemie Report and Transkript, were on site to report their impressions of the meeting.

Mirror Of Research Quality

As is the tradition, the meeting was also the stage for many young and aspiring scientists and their research. Two awards each were handed out for extraordinary research (Karoline Kollmann and Christian Gruber/Andreas Loos) and PhD theses (Michael Tscherner and Christoph Hasenhindl) Alongside, further prizes for three inspiring scientific talks (Mario Kuttke, Jonas Ramoni and Simone Kurz) and 12 posters (Antonio Biundo. Eva Maria Putz, Andrea Düregger, Christina Andrea Müller, Eva Stappler. Justyna Nocon, Iulia Danciu, Stefan Unterweger, Alba Hykollari, Andreas Weinhäusel, Anna Bachmayr-Heyda, Verena Bachmann and Stefan Hofbauer) at the meeting were awarded during the closing ceremony. The Austrian Young Glycoscientist Awards went to Markus Tomek and Elisabeth Svehla, for the best Glycobiology-related talk and poster, respectivley. Josef Glößl, Head of ÖGMBT, pointet out the “admirable range and quality of fundamental bioscientific research with potential for application, which is being conducted at Austrian institutes”. This was mirrored in the Scientific Committee of this years Annual Meeting, which comprised almost the entirety of Viennas Universities and Academic Insitutes alike:

The 6th Annual ÖGMBT Meeting was organised by

Rudolf Dömötör (WU), Josef Glößl (BOKU), Alexandra Khassidov (ÖGMBT), Karl Kuchler (MUW) and Ernst Müllner as chair (MFPL).

Exhibition

One particular concern of the ÖGMBT is the stimulation of communication between academia and industry. With 40 exhibitors who informed the participants about their products and services the exhibition was fully booked.

Wolfgang Weinkum (PALL), exhibitor and organiser of a workshop later described the meeting as an "Excellent event with possibility to network with a lot of key opinion leaders from biotech, academics, key universities and non-university research institutes"