Daniel Burgstaller as student finalist at the Merck Award 2018

Darmstadt, Germany, November 19, 2018 – Merck, recognized three graduate students who have demonstrated innovation in life science at an awards ceremony at the company’s global headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany recently.

Twelve finalists from across the globe (four in each of three awards categories: bioseparations, food & beverage safety, and tumor biology) presented their research to an audience of Merck scientists, and guests as part of the 2018 Life Science Awards. Yu Cai, Yanqi Qu and Jun Ho Lee were each named winners of the $10,000 grand prize in their respective categories.

• Daniel Burgstaller, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, “Flocculation assisted primary separation and product capture by precipitation – How do we get it continuous?”
• Ashton Lavoie, North Carolina State University, “Mixed-mode peptide ligands for improved clearance of CHO host cell proteins.”
• Ujwal Patil, University of Houston, “Real-time monitoring of antibody in column breakthrough.”

• Imanuel Yüce, Justus Liebig University of Giessen, “Development of in situ and in silico tools as well as improvement of classical techniques for structure elucidation in planar chromatography.”
• Anna Sophia Harrand, Cornell University, “Effects of strain diversity and growth conditions on subsequent bacterial growth.”
• Shaoakang Zhang, University of Georgia, “Whole genome sequencing, a one-stop platform for foodborne pathogen subtyping, characterization and detection.”

• Jan Lumibao, University of Illinois Urbana, Champaign, “Functional capacity of CHCHD2 in glioblastoma cells expressing EGFRvIII.”
• Christina Mertens, Goethe-University Frankfurt, “Role of lipocalin-2 from tumor-associated macrophages as alternative iron transporter during tumor growth.”
• Silvia Duarte Sanmiguel, Ohio State University, “Nanotechnology-based approaches towards elucidating and modulating the immunology of the tumor niche.”