Biomedica 2009 - once again a great success

850 visitors, 40 presentations and awarded young researchers
International, very high quality presentations, excellent integration of young scientists, are phrases that kept surfacing during the course of Biomedica 2009, April 1 + 2, Liege, Belgium. This summit has shown, for the third consecutive year, the close collaboration between scientists, students and managers alike across Belgian, the Netherlands and Germany.

More than 850 people gathered at the Palais des Congrès in Liege to take part in life sciences conferences and peruse the accompanying exhibition addressing leading breakthroughs.

International key note speaker Prof. Yongmin Kim of the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, filled the auditorium with his presentation on “Translational research and technology commercialization in bioengineering”. Furthermore, over 40 presentations were held by renowned professors and doctors in the fields on biomaterial & polymers, nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and molecular medicine and imaging. These professionals have been committed to Biomedica’s success since the very first event.

The conferences were furthermore supported by 45 sponsors & exhibitors who presented their high tech products and services on 2,900 m2 of space across 2 floors. This is the first time that Biomedica has welcomed so many leading sponsors & exhibitors to the summit.

External companies had opportunity to secure capital from investors in the form of elevator pitches. All pitches were well received and extensive discussions with potential investors took place following each presentation. Lutz Stehling from the German company mNEMOSCIENCE, won the first prize for their extremely compelling elevator pitch.

EEN Enterprise Europe Network, specialists in B2B services, hosted this year’s match making session. Right up to the very last minute the matchmaking room was full of potential partners from life science companies and research institutes.
Skills3 ensured that the job fair was full of recently graduated professionals and human resource managers. An overwhelming amount of jobs were posted in the Biomedica Job Fair portal which was further reinforced by the many active conversations which took place in the job fair arena.

Researchers were also highlighted in the poster competition. 122 high quality posters were submitted by Phd students / graduates. A crowd of interested participants continually surrounded the posters during each break. From the 122 posters 4 lucky individuals received an award for their work. Marie-Dominique Simonet Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research as well as Jean-Claude Marcourt Minister of Economy and employment honored the closing session and award ceremony with their presence.

In the poster session the winners are:
- in the category of "biopharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals" the award went to Vincent Dehousse for his poster "Characterization and evaluation of nanoparticles made of chitosan and trimethylchitosan as siRNA carriers".
- In the category of "molecular medicine and imaging" the award went to David Musmeci (Metastasis research laboratory, GIGA cancer, University of Liege) for his poster on "Identification of New Accessible Biomarkers in Human Glioblastoma".
- In the category of “biomaterial and biopolymer” the award went to Cindy Kottgen for her poster on “Synthesis and swelling behaviour of PLA-PEO-PLA and PCL-PEO_PCL copolymers”.
- In the category of “medical devices” the award went to Veronique Vermeeren for her poster on “Diamond based biosensors with an impedimentric and label free read out allowed”.

Further awards included the AKM (Aachener Kompetenzzentrum Medizintechnik) award was presented by Prof.Dr. Schmitz-Rode to Christian Burger from Kings College, London. Mr. Maud Guéders received the ‘Fund Léon Frédéricq – Remarkable success stories by Pr. Dr. Vincent Geenen” award. Dr. Alain Chariot and Dr. Laurent Nguyen received the ‘Fondation Marcel-Florkin’ award for their work.

Biomedica 2010 will take place in Aachen, Germany, on March, 17 + 18, 2010. We look forward to welcoming you again in Aachen next year.

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