Young Polymer Researchers Austria Meeting (YPRA)
was held in Weiz, Austria from September 18-20, 2024
The first YPRA was attended by about 60 participants, one sixth of them from abroad, and featured 28 oral and 17 poster presentations, as well as two invited young faculty talks given by the two rising stars of Austrian polymer science, Katharina Ehrmann and Elisabeth Rossegger. The research presented covered a wide range of topics, but concentrated on two major themes, namely polymer photochemistry and covalent adaptable networks. In these two areas, the Austrian research groups are internationally
The YPRA awarded a prize for the best oral presentation - the Klaus Hummel Prize - and a prize for the best poster to encourage the next generation of polymer scientists.
Edma Gjata (TU Wien) won the Klaus Hummel Prize for the best oral presentation for her paper entitled "High-performance photo base generators for visible light initiation of oxa-ene Michael addition reactions" and Johanna M. Uher (PCCL) was awarded with the poster prize for her poster entitled "Reformable bio-based thiol-ene vitrimers for nanoimprint lithography: Enhanced covalent adaptability for adjustable surface properties". Both award winners were determined by an electronic poll of all YPRA attendees.
As part of the YPRA, a panel discussion took place on the topic "PhD is done, now what?". Katharina Kodolitsch, Nadja Noormofidi, Elisabeth Rossegger and Katharina Ehrmann discussed different aspects of the transition from university to industry, career building, mentoring, work-life balance in different types of jobs, the gender pay gap and much more. Many thanks to Florian Lackner for the great moderation.
In the coming weeks, the YPRA advisory board will decide whether this meeting will be held again in 2026 complementing the Polymer Meetings, a biennial conference series organized by the polymer communities of Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia.
The next Polymer Meeting, number 16, will take place in Prague in Sept. 1-4, 2025.
Organization team: Larissa Donner, Lena Hofbauer, Johanna Lang, Zuzana Reuter, David Schuster, Matthias Steiner, Peter Weiss, Gregor Trimmel and Christian Slugovc
Advisory board: Alexander Bismarck (Univ. Wien), Oliver Brüggemann (JKU), Wolfgang Kern (MUL), Robert Liska (TU Wien), Christian Paulik (JKU), Sandra Schlögl (PCCL), Christian Slugovc (TU Graz), Gregor Trimmel (TU Graz)
Schedule
The meeting began on Wednesday, September 18, 2024 at 10:30 a.m. and ended on Friday, September 20, 2024 after lunch in Weiz/Krottendorf at the Garden of Generations. The final program is below.
Book of Abstracts
The electronic version of the abstract book is available here.
A printed notebook version was provided to attendees.
Young Polymer Researchers Austria
Book of Abstracts
C. Slugovc (Ed.)
DOI: 10.3217/r0qzf-8c869
Licence: CC BY-NC-ND
