Department of Biomaterials was involved in organising this year's Scandinavian Society of Biomaterials meeting in Hafjell that focussed on the underlying challenges in biomaterials research. With the combination of an exotic and atmospheric location up in the Norwegian mountains and promise of good skiing conditions, we were able to attract not only some of the leading scientists in the field of biomaterials and tissue engineering as invited speakers but also enthusiastic biomaterials scientists from all corners of the world with people flying from as far as Singapore just to join our conference.
In addition to the very inspiring keynote talks by the topnotch international invited speakers, the scientific programme that was put together by Håvard, Hanna, and our colleagues Pawel and David from NTNU also included excellent contributed talks from biomaterials researchers from all across Europe, two of which were given by PhD students from our lab David Wiedmer and Manuel Schweikle. With two oral presentations, one rapid fire presentation, and four posters, we took the opportunity to showcase our research to our Nordic peers and our lab was in fact the most represented group in Hafjell. Many scientific discussions were had during the long coffee breaks, in the outdoor swimming pool, in the overcrowded sauna, and especially during the poster sessions, making all the effort our department has put into arranging this fantastic event all the more worthwhile.
From snowy mountain to sunny California
Our department was also well-represented at the IADR2017 conference, the largest conference on dental research, that was organised in San Francisco exactly one week after the Hafjell meeting. As many as six researchers from our lab presented their latest research results at the conference to an audience of broad interdisciplinary background in all aspects of dental research. Being able to discuss our science with people having different research interests and scientific backgrounds, as well as meeting with our colleagues from the Faculty of Dentistry in Oslo far away from the toils of everyday worklife and learning more about their research work counted for us as the definite highlights of this conference.