ACHEMA Media Award: Hearts made of spinach, people on chips, and no room for nonsense

The ACHEMA Media Award 2018 goes to Marlene Heckl for her blog post “A Heart of Spinach”, published on DocCheck and Scilogs. The €10,000 prize will be awarded on June 14, 2018, at ACHEMA, the world's largest trade fair for the process industry, in Frankfurt. For the first time, the jury also awarded two “Jury Prizes” to Arndt Reuning for his contribution “A Little Helps a Lot”, broadcast on Deutschlandfunk, and to Dirk Gieselmann for his article “The Human on a Chip”, published in SZ Magazin.

A total of 46 entries across all media categories were submitted, presenting topics related to chemical engineering, biotechnology, or process engineering in a way that is interesting and understandable for a broader public. The winning article, which discusses the potential use of plant scaffolding structures as a basis for organs, was particularly convincing due to its engaging and illustrative presentation of research work that opens up enormous technical possibilities; however, it is still in the early stages, and the author clearly shows how far the path to application still is. Given the abundance of compelling submissions, the jury, consisting of media experts and scientists, decided to additionally award two special prizes, each endowed with €1,000.

An “Award of the Jury” goes to Dr. Arndt Reuning. In his radio report “A Little Helps a Lot – The Fertilizer Becomes a Problem”, he addresses the nitrogen issue related to the revision of fertilizer regulations, focusing on the problem of excess manure and presenting possible solutions.

The second “Jury Prize” is awarded to Dirk Gieselmann, who vividly describes the atmosphere at a young Berlin-based company developing “Lab-on-a-Chip” systems in the SZ Magazin under the title “The Human on a Chip”. These systems are designed to replicate the human organism on a scale of 1:100,000 and could one day make animal testing unnecessary.

The quality of the texts, films, and radio contributions submitted for the ACHEMA Media Award 2018 was consistently good to excellent. The spectrum ranged from the use of renewable raw materials, biomaterials, and pharmaceutical research to molecular cuisine. There were also contributions addressing wastewater issues, diesel emissions, and digital methods to help people with “Locked-In Syndrome”. “Especially in times when science journalism faces challenges and must counter ‘alternative facts’ with tight budgets and limited airtime, this award is particularly meaningful to us,” says Prof. Dr. Kurt Wagemann, Managing Director of DECHEMA. “We want to encourage authors to continue engaging with complex topics in science and technology. Only then can a reasonable societal dialogue about genetic engineering, the energy transition, or the impacts of Big Data be achieved.”

The ACHEMA Media Award has been presented every three years since 1997 by DECHEMA to the author, author(s), or team of a German-language journalistic original contribution that communicates topics related to chemical process engineering, biotechnology, chemistry, or technical environmental protection to a broad public in an understandable manner.

This year's award ceremony will take place on Thursday, June 14, 2018, at 5:00 PM during DECHEMA Day at ACHEMA in Hall 9.2, Stand D74. Registration at presse[at]dechema.de.