On September 29, the Lower Austria Science Awards were presented at the House of Digitalization in Tulln. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Sophia Steinbacher-Haid was honored with the Science Future Award - which recognizes high-quality scientific theses by academics - for her dissertation titled “Evaluation and Application of Molecular Diagnostic Methods for Microbial Water Quality Analysis”.
The research was conducted at Karl Landsteiner University and the TU Wien with strong support from MedUniVienna under the academic supervision of Univ.-Prof. Dr. Andreas Farnleitner. The award-winning dissertation, which was funded by several research projects of the GFF Lower Austria, focused on the application of modern molecular biology methods to address complex issues in water management. Using genetic analyses, sources of faecal contamination in water bodies were precisely identified, the impact of shipping on the microbiological and hygienic water quality of the Danube was investigated, and the causes of manganese particle formation in a drinking water well were elucidated.
A total of four open-access articles were published in leading international journals: