Springtime can only mean one thing for Scandinavian biomaterials scientists: it is time to get ready for the Annual Meeting of the Scandinavian Society for Biomaterials, one of the biggest highlights in our scientific calendars! The purpose of these meetings is to provide a place for biomaterials scientist from the Nordic and Baltic region to socialise, network and share research insights. With such a strong focus on the social side of scientific conferences and interesting meeting locations, ScSB meetings have also become an important meeting place for biomaterials researchers joining us all the way from Czechia, Taiwan and Spain. We were more than ready to socialise with our biomaterials friends from the neighbour countries, and those travelling from further away at this year's ScSB meeting!
This year, we sent a team of researchers with very heterogenous experience to represent the Department of Biomaterials at the 18th Annual Meeting of the in the beautiful surroundings of Vanajanlinna Manor in Finland. While Hanna Tiainen has been attending the annual ScSB meetings regularly ever since she herself was a PhD student more than a decade ago and is familiar with both the format and crowd at these meetings, and this time even the place as well as Vanajanlinna is located just a stone's throw away from where she grew up, Inger Thea Myklebust Ernø was attending her first ever scientific conference. Little did Thea expect how much the three intense days at the conference would enrich her PhD experience. Not only did she get her first experience of presenting research results from her PhD project to a diverse and very interdisciplinary international audience but also met several like-minded researchers and future collaborators who have been struggling with similar technical issues Thea is currently facing in their own research. The invaluable small practical tips and tricks Thea learned during the conference from her newfound colleagues are already being put into practice in our lab.
Our Marie Curie postdoc fellow Probal Basu presented a poster based on his research work on cellulose-reinforced hydrogel membranes for periodontal research, while Enrique Oreja had a busy few days with first presenting his research on implant surface functionalisation as a rapid-fire oral presentation and later having more in-depth discussions on his research results by his poster presenting more detailed research results that what could fit in a 3-minute presentation. As ScSB board members, Enrique and Hanna were also taking their job to represent the society very seriously and led not only the general assembly and board member elections, but were also leading the way during the very Finnish after dinner sauna session that included a compulsory dip into the chilly waters of Katumajärvi, which translates to Lake of Regret, with no regret.
