The Out of the Box Award is granted annually during the Vienna BioCenter PhD Symposium. As an incentive within the Vienna BioCenter PhD Program to address complex problems using creative, non-standard approaches, a yearly stipend of 10 000€ is awarded for designing the best curiosity-driven, high-risk experiment.
This year two teams received the award, represented by students from Max Perutz Labs Vienna, Research institute of Molecular Pathlogy (IMP) and the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA):
Sebastian Platzer (Hein lab, Max Perutz Labs) , Leon Schmidt (Hein lab, Max Perutz Labs), Paul Kirchgatterer (Gaidt lab, IMP) received the award for their project “Interrogating viral gene vulnerability using high-throughput, fully automated cell culture"
Felix Haslhofer (Buecker lab, Max Perutz Labs) and Žiga Vičič (Jachowicz lab, IMBA) received the award for their project ”Unlocking Bxb1 potential: gp47-mediated flexible recombination in mammalian cells
The two projects were selected, as both stood out for their creativity, collaboration, and potential. We are excited to see how the awardees will bring them to life.