Arianna Piffer and Uli Herrmann have each won a Young Investigator Grant for 2025. With this grant, SPOG supports the careers of young researchers in paediatric oncology.
Every two years, SPOG awards grants to young researchers at SPOG member hospitals for studies in the area of paediatric oncology. The condition: the clinical research projects must be directly related to patients. This year, two projects have won grants:
- Arianna Piffer, Fellow at University Children’s Hospital Zurich, impressed the judges with her research project “Advancing Deep Learning for Pediatric Low-Grade Glioma Segmentation”. The emerging paediatric oncologist aims to use artificial intelligence to improve imaging of paediatric low-grade gliomas (brain tumours).
- Uli Herrmann, fellow at Inselspital Bern, is carrying out research on malignant paediatric kidney tumours. His project, “In depth spatial characterization of the tumor microenvironment of Wilms tumor”, will analyse the interaction of tumour cells with their environment in detail.
SPOG is pleased about the new generation of researchers. SPOG’s independent international scientific advisory board evaluated four entries that made it to the last round for the award. Arianna Piffer and Uli Herrmann will present their research projects at the Scientific Meeting.
The two winners of the Young Investigator Grants: Dr. med. Arianna Piffer and Dr. med. Uli Herrmann.
The SPOG Young Investigator initiative
SPOG awards grants to young researchers under the age of 40 working in a SPOG member hospital for clinical and directly patient-related studies in paediatric oncology. SPOG’s independent international scientific advisory board assesses the relevance and methodological quality of the research work as well as the prior knowledge of the young researchers to carry it out independently.
Brigitte Casanova
Brigitte Casanova supports SPOG communication projects; as a Germanist, she complements the science-oriented team at the Coordination Center.
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