Ioanna Antoniadi (left), winner of the UPSC Agrisera Prize 2020, and her group leader Karin Ljung (right) who is congratulating to the prize at the end of the UPSC Christmas Celebration on Zoom[2020-12-14] Ioanna Antoniadi is awarded with the UPSC Agrisera Prize 2020 to acknowledge her scientific achievements and her engagement to improve the work environment at UPSC. The UPSC Agrisera Prize is awarded every year to a person working at UPSC and was announced today during the virtual UPSC Christmas Celebration.
Ioanna Antoniadi works as a postdoc in Karin Ljung’s group at the Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology at SLU. Since she started at UPSC, she contributed to several scientific publications, among others to a publication in Nature Communications in 2020. She is the expert for fluorescent-activated cell sorting (FACS) at UPSC - an advanced technique that allows to separate cells according to certain physical characteristics like for example different cell size – and was co-applicant for a successful grant application that allowed to purchase a new FACS instrument recently.
Besides her scientific contribution and her responsibility for supervising and training new users to the FACS instrument, Ioanna Antoniadi is part of the Departmental Common Laboratory Resources group that manages the laboratories at the Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology. The nomination letter pointed out that “she is very engaged in improving the lab environment to make it work at its best” and that she spontaneously took over additional tasks besides her daily responsibilities to improve the work environment at UPSC.
The UPSC Agrisera Prize is awarded every year to a PhD student, a postdoc or a technician for excellent scientific achievement and great commitment to improve the UPSC work environment. It is sponsored by Agrisera but the members of the UPSC board select the winner of the prize. Everyone working at UPSC can nominate a colleague for the UPSC Agrisera Prize. This year, the UPSC Board received nine nominations, the highest number of nominations since 2014.
“The prize gives us the possibility to acknowledge great achievements and commitments and it is every year very difficult to choose one candidate out of many good suggestions”, says Catherine Bellini, chairmen of the UPSC Board who announced the winner of the prize today together with Joanna Porankiewicz-Asplund from Agrisera. “We were delight that we received this high number of nominations this year. It shows that people care about their workplace.”