Great Success at the 34th biannual Meeting of the ÖGHMP

Great success and strong presence of the ICC Water & Health at the 34th biannual Meeting of the Austrian Society for Hygiene, Microbiology and Preventive Medicine

© ÖGHMP

The Interuniversity Cooperation Centre for Water and Health has most recently received a grant of the Austrian Federal Ministery for Science, Research and Economy for its sustained establishment at the University of Technology, Vienna and the Medical University Vienna. Already, the ICC Water & Health has achieved a further success within this funding period.

Within the frame of the 34th biannual Meeting of the Austrian Society for Hygiene, Microbiology and Preventive Medicine (ÖGHMP) that took place in Bad Ischl from June 2 to 5, two renowned prizes were awarded to two members of the ICC Water & Health. Dr. Georg Reischer received the Austrian Microbiology Award 2014 for his publication "Performance characteristics of qPCR assays targeting human- and ruminant-associated Bacteroidetes for microbial source tracking across sixteen countries on six continents"¹.

Dr. Julia Vierheilig received the Meteka Prize for Industrial and Hospital Hygiene for her work: "Clostridium perfringens is not suitable for the indication of fecal pollution from ruminant wildlife but is associated with excreta from non-herbivorous animals and human sewage"². Dr. Vierheilig has performed her work in the frame of the FWF Doctoral Program "Water Resource Systems", to which the ICC Water & Health contributes with significant input (www.waterresources.at).

The Meeting was organized under the auspices of the president of the ÖGHMP, Univ. Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Regina Sommer, who is the head of the ICC Water & Health at the Medical University Vienna. The ICC was represented with 9 oral and 10 poster presentations dealing with the topics innovative water analytics, management of water resources and safety of drinking water and bathing water.

¹ Reischer G.H, JE Ebdon, JM Haider, N Schuster, W Ahmed, J Åström, AR Blanch, G Blöschl, D Byamukama, T Coakleyi, C Ferguson, G Goshu, GP Ko, AM de Roda Husman, D Mushi, R Poma, B Pradhan, V Rajal, M Schade, R Sommer, H Taylor, EM Toth, V Vrajmasu, S Wuertz , RL Mach, and AH Farnleitner (2013): Performance characteristics of qPCR assays targeting human- and ruminant-associated bacteroidetes for microbial source tracking across sixteen countries on six continents.Environmental Science and Technology 47 (15): 8548-8556

² Vierheilig J, Frick C, Mayer R, Kirschner AKT, Reischer GH, Derx J, Mach RL, Sommer R, and AH Farnleitner (2013): Clostridium perfringens is not suitable for the indication of fecal pollution from ruminant wildlife but is associated with excreta from non-herbivorous animals and human sewage.Applied and Environmental Microbiology 79 (16): 5089-5092