Made by Lot of illustrations
Three finalist accompied by the 4TU.Health team

Finale 4TU.Health poster competition

Three prizes for best posters

On Thursday 23 March, three prizes were awarded during the finale of the digital 4TU.Health poster competition. This poster competition is part of the 4TU.Health collaboration. PhD students in the field of health and technology were challenged to present their research in an open, engaging way. All participants were given the opportunity to briefly present their posters and view other posters. The winning PhD student may use the prize to visit another TU or conduct research together with another TU. This is the first year that this PhD competition is being organized within 4TU.Health.

45 PhD candidates from the four technical universities participated in this competition. The aim of the competition is to offer PhD students a platform for sharing their research, but also to identify possible future collaborations. Prior to the presentation, the posters were presented online. Thus, prior to the finale, PhD students assessed each other's work and provided suggestions for possible collaboration. In the finals, all participants were allowed to pitch, after which the best eight were allowed to pitch again for a larger group.

The eight finalists were: Marco Locarno from TUD. Nina Doorn, Pardis Farjam and Hugo Markus from UT. From TU/e Dennis van de Sande, Terese Helström, Lisanne Bergefurt and Emma Moonen pitched in the finale.

Two of the three winners of the 4TU. Health poster competition are PhD students at the UT: Hugo Markus and Nina Doorn. Emma Moonen is the third winner, she is a PhD candidate at TU/e. 

Hugo Markus (PhD candidate at the BIOEE department) found it besides presenting his own research project a great pleasure to meet peers in the domain of health and tech. Markus: "I saw a lot of intriguing posters during the pitch sessions. Several caught my interest and can complement my own research very well. The prize will be used to set up a collaboration with a PhD student from another TU, with the goal of applying alternative analyses to my data to make new discoveries."

Nina Doorn (PhD candidate at CNPH) indicated that the event exceeded her expectations. Doorn: 'There were many interesting pitches with beautiful posters, and everyone was very involved in the discussions. Already during the event I exchanged messages with colleagues from other universities about possible collaborations. What am I going to do with the prize? I don't know exactly yet! On the one hand, I think it would be interesting to work with experts in the field of Machine Learning (for example from the TUe) to optimize that part of my project. On the other hand, I am interested in collaborating with bionanotechnology groups (from TU Delft), to create more depth in the biological part of my project. In any case, I think it would be nice to find a collaboration that both parties can learn from and benefit from.

The three prizes and their research:

  • Hugo Markus – Unraveling crosstalk between neuroblastoma and bone marrow mesenchymal stromal cells

    Neuroblastoma is a childhood tumor that often develops resistance in chemotherapy treatment. Understanding this mechanism for new therapeutic options is key to improving neuroblastoma patient survival. It is thought that the communication between neuroblastoma and mesenchymal stromal cells can lead to resistance. This project takes the first step to unravel the roles of both cell types in this process.

  • Nina Doorn – An in vitro and in silico neuronal network model to unravel genetic encephalopathies

    Genetic neurological disorders are difficult to understand and hard to study. In vitro, patient-derived neuronal networks offer a tool to investigate these disorders, but the signals obtained from these models are difficult to decipher. In this project, computerized in silico models are used to unravel what underlies these signals, enabling the discovery of disease mechanisms in these genetic encephalopathies.

  • Emma Moonen - Wearable sweat sensing device for monitoring sweat rate from single glands in a sedentary state:

    Monitoring patients after surgery is important to reduce serious complications. To improve patient monitoring, an analysis of the sweat of the patients is proposed. However, current devices for analysis of biomarker concentrations in sweat need a large volume of and cannot measure semi-continuously. This project proposed the first sweat-sensing device to monitor small volumes of sweat, of patients in a resting state.

About 4TU.Health

4TU.Health is a collaboration between the University of Twente (UT), Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), Wageningen University & Research (WUR) and Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), each with their own specific healthcare technology focus. Information about the photos: the illustration was made by Lot of Illustrations. In the second photo a screenshot of the three finalists and three supervisors from the 4TU.Health team: Anneliene Jonker (UT), Guido Camps (WUR) and Hanneke Bodewes (UT).

drs. M.M.J. van Hillegersberg - Hofmans (Martine)
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