At the 78th annual meeting of the DPG in Dresden 2014, Europhysics Letters and the Biological Physics Division of the German Physical Society awarded four prizes for outstanding scientific achievements in the context of the poster sessions. The awards went to

• Dr. André Düselder - 1st prize (Postdoc with Christoph Schmidt at Universität Göttingen)
• Dr. Martin Schorb - 1st prize (Postdoc with John Briggs at EMBL Heidelberg)
• Dr. Karin John - 2nd prize (Group Leader at University Grenoble)
• Ms. Stephanie Möllmert - 2nd prize (PhD student with Jochen Guck at TU Dresden)

... selected by the 2014 Poster Award Committee (Karin John, Cornelia Monzel, Timo Betz, Ulrich Schwarz, Aurelien Roux, Michael Schlierf).

Present at the award ceremony during the general assembly of the DPG biological physics division were: Dr. Olivia Roche (IOP Publishing), Prof. Udo Seifert (outgoing EPL Editor), Prof. Jochen Guck (EPL Editor), and Prof. Stefan Diez (Speaker of the Biological Physics Division).

 

Laudatio André Düselder

André Düselder (Poster Title: Directionality of Single Kinesin-5 Cin8 Molecules is Mediated by the Tail Domains) showed beautiful data on Cin8p, a kinesin-5 of the yeast spindle that has a specific tail domain. He showed that this tail domain dictates a unique behavior of Cin8p, that can switch direction of movement along the microtubule very quickly. By the combination of molecular biology tools, cell imaging techniques and biophysical single molecule measurements, André has shown a great versatility to come up with this surprising conclusion.(Laudatio written by Aurelien Roux)

 

Laudatio Martin Schorb

To decipher the precise process of endocytosis in living cell, Martin Schorb (Poster Title: Time-resolved electron tomography reveals how the plasma membrane is reshaped during endocytosis) combined electron microscopy with fluorescently tagged proteins to retrospectively rearrange the temporal course from membrane invagination to scission events. To understand this process an immense amount of data had to be aligned and reconstructed. Martin presented this very complex reconstruction process in a very accessible way even for non-specialists. This interdisciplinary project gives an impressive detail on the molecular as well as the morphologically level and the technique itself may give a wealth of new insight into the process of endocytosis. (Laudatio written by Stefan Diez)

Laudatio Karin John

Karin John showed on her poster (Poster Title: Nonlinear elasticity of cross-linked networks) two formalisms to described elastic properties of semi-flexible filament networks. She was able to express the elasticity of the material from 1-a statistical derivative approach, expressing the local changes of the network, then integrating over the volume, and 2-from a classical material science approach, computing the strain field. Surprisingly, she obtained similar expressions in both formalisms, that allow for direct comparisons of the 2 formalisms. By this unique theoretical strategy, Karin has tight links between different formalisms that will be very useful in the future to compare experiments. (Laudatio written by Aurelien Roux)

Laudatio Stephanie Möllmert

The question of spinal cord regeneration is among of the most urgent medical challenges. Stephanie Möllmert (Poster Title: AFM-based indentation measurements of adult zebrafish spinal cord tissue) used the Zebrafish as model system to study the mechanically implications in this process using optical and atomic force microscopy. The spatial resolved stiffness maps showed locally variable stiffness that give rise to the hypothesis that neuronal growth is favored by increased substrate rigidity, which was already observed in the context of similar systems. Stephanie combined a beautiful and clearly structured poster with an excellent presentation of the subject. (Laudatio written by Stefan Diez)