LABVOLUTION AWARD: Excellence in Lab Optimization
The LABVOLUTION Award recognizes analogue and digital laboratory optimizations. The best projects win high-quality consulting and/or training services worth more than 10,000 euros.
The LABVOLUTION AWARD
The award recognizes outstanding improvements that have significant added value for work and processes in the laboratory. These can be “analog” optimizations of processes, procedures and methods or technologies, equipment, design and management techniques (e.g. lean in the laboratory). Equally relevant are “digital” solutions, tools and software. The important thing is that a relevant improvement can be achieved and, ideally, proven.
This can affect a wide range of areas – from increasing productivity to cost savings, speed, reliability, safety, material consumption or energy efficiency through to motivation or employee satisfaction.
Frequently asked questions
Who can apply?
The LABVOLUTION AWARD is explicitly aimed at users from the laboratory sector, i.e. laboratories, research groups, individuals or laboratory teams. The improvement ideas can be “small ideas” that require little resources (time/money) or medium or large projects that require correspondingly more resources – the size of the project is not decisive – what ultimately matters is the ratio of effort to benefit.
What is there to win?
The winners will receive high-quality seminars and consulting services worth more than 10,000 euros (1st place: 10,000 euros, 2nd place: 2,500 euros, 3rd place: 1,000 euros).
How does the process work?
The independent expert jury will select three finalists from all the entries. The winners of the first, second and third places will be announced during LABVOLUTION from May 21 to 23, 2019 in Hanover.
What is important?
The following criteria are important for the jury when selecting the award winners:
- The degree of innovation of the solution or the novelty of the improvement,
- the effectiveness and sustainability of the implementation and
- the added value for the laboratory.
Whether the optimization idea is a big or small idea is not decisive. “Small” ideas with a good impact or added value for a laboratory have at least as good a chance.
Nominees and winners 2019
Congratulations to this year’s winners of the LABVOLUTION Award. With these optimization projects you were able to convince the jury.
1st place
At Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZ Jülich), the “Bioprocesses and Bioanalytics” working groupdevelops production processes for metabolites, intermediates and proteins using microbial systems. Typical research and development projects in industrial biotechnology usually suffer from insufficient capacities in the field of microbial cultivation. The establishment of an automated and miniaturized cultivation platform at the FZ Jülich has effectively remedied this situation.
The first developments for this system were carried out back in 2008 with a prototype laboratory robotics environment. The third system has now been put into operation. Using this platform, around 48 cultivations per week can be produced with reduced effort.
By comparison, a user at FZ Jülich can produce two to four cultivations with a classic, parallel laboratory bioreactor system.
2nd place
In laboratories, not only are thousands of measurement data recorded every day, photography is also part of everyday laboratory life – photos of developed PCR plates, sample tubes and much more. However, the assignment of image and experiment is not always clear. The Swiss contract laboratory Interlabor Belp therefore uses the “PicWatch” software.
The software is a LIMS add-on and automatically changes image names, which can then be assigned to QR codes on sample containers, for example. In this example, the laboratory produces around 30,000 images per year. The use of PicWatch leads to a saving of around ten working days – with almost 100 percent error avoidance.
3rd place
The production of nanoparticles for medical applications is currently characterized by many complex and manual steps. This is where the APRONA project comes in, in which a flexible robot-based platform for the automated productionof nanoparticlesis being developed. Using a two-armed robotic system, nanoparticle systems can also be produced with narrowly defined specifications and short development cycles and processed directly into tailor-made products that are used in individualized diagnostics and therapy.
The APRONA consortium consists of four project partners. Goldfuß engineering GmbH, Biametrics GmbH and BioTeSys GmbH represent the automation and life sciences expertise in this joint project. The Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC in Würzburg is the link between these partners. BioRegio STERN Management GmbH is the coordinator of the joint project.
The organizers
The jury
Marc Platthaus
Editor-in-chief
LABORPRAXIS/LAB Worldwide
Dr. Wolf-Christian Gerstner
Managing Director
Geniu GmbH
PD Dr. Sascha Beutel
Institute of Technical Chemistry
Leibniz Universität Hannover
Further information
Award for Laboratory Optimization 2021 – start of the application phase
The LABVOLUTION AWARD is aimed at laboratories that implement “digital or analog optimizations”. The application phase starts on February 15. The best laboratory optimization projects will be awarded during LABVOLUTION from 7 to 9 September 2021 in Hanover. Hamburg. Designing effective and “lean” processes in the laboratory, digitizing workflows or
Award for the best laboratory optimization projects
Almost everyone is looking for breakthrough ideas for improvements in the laboratory. The new LABVOLUTION AWARD “Excellence in Lab Optimization” recognizes the most innovative ideas with a lasting impact. Geniu is one of three partners of the award. The best lab optimization projects will win and be honored during LABVOLUTION