Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to announce the winners of the 2018 Polymers Travel Awards:

Patxi Garra, a PhD student at the Université de Haute-Alsace, France, whose research focuses on development of new photoinitiating and redox initiating systems for free radical and cationic polymerization. He will be presenting his work “Unprecedented photopolymerization of very thick films and access to composites: low optical densities vs. latent species strategies” at Polymers: Design, Function and Application (PDFA 2018).

Kankana Banerjee, a PhD student at the University of Mysore, India, whose research focuses on isolation, mass culturing, screening of fungal species for synthesis of metal nanoparticles and broad aspects of their biomedical applications, including antimicrobial, antioxidant, antibiofilm, biocatalytic, cytotoxicity studies on various cell lines, etc. She will be presenting her work “Peptide enhancement of gold nanoparticles exploited for an exceptional anticancer effect on colon carcinoma cells” at Polymers: Design, Function and Application (PDFA 2018).

The awards consist of 500 Swiss Francs, with a certificate and a waiver of the registration fee for the PDFA conference.

In addition, we have chosen five runners-up during the evaluation, who will also receive registration waivers to attend the conference.

• Junliang Zhang, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany;
• Qasim Zia, The University of Manchester, UK;
• Sarah Glaß, University of Leipzig, Germany;
• Arn Mignon, University Ghent, Belgium;
• Pavel I. Semenyuk, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia.

The decision was extremely difficult as we had a lot of high quality applications for the awards and we would like to thank all applicants for submitting their diverse and fascinating range of research topics. We congratulate the winners on their accomplishments.

Prof. Dr. Alexander Böker
Editor, Polymers, Chairman of PDFA
Fraunhofer-Institut für Angewandte Polymerforschung, Universität Potsdam, Germany

Prof. Dr. Frank Wiesbrock
Editor, Polymers, Chairman of PDFA
PCCL - Polymer Competence Center Leoben, Leoben, Austria