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.
What is there to win?
The winners receive online/presence training and/or consulting services from Geniu worth 10,000 euros (1st place), 2,500 euros (2nd place) and 1,000 euros (3rd place). The special prizes are endowed with 1,000 euros (doctorate) and 750 euros (Bachelor/Master). In addition, all prize winners will receive an exhibition space at Labvolution 2021 (e.g. for a poster and/or exhibit), participation in Geniu’s “Lab Excellence Forum”, a subscription to Laborpraxis and the opportunity to contribute to Laborpraxis.
Who can apply?
The improvement ideas and topics can be “small ideas” that require few resources (time/money) or medium-sized 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.
The LABVOLUTION AWARD is explicitly aimed at users from the laboratory sector, i.e. laboratories, research groups, individuals or laboratory teams. I.e. professionals in private companies or public organizations and research institutions.
The two special prizes are aimed at (former) students of a college or university who have completed a doctorate/doctoral thesis/PhD or Bachelor’s/Master’s thesis no more than 2 years ago (submission date of the thesis from Jan. 2019)
What is important?
The following criteria are important for the jury when selecting the award winners:
How does the process work?
The application phase begins on February 15, 2021. An independent jury will select three finalists and two winners for the special prizes from all applications. The winners of the prizes will be announced during LABVOLUTION from September 7 to 9, 2021 in Hanover
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