Carolina Catarino, a 3rd year Ph.D. student, has been selected as one of the winners of the Young Researchers - America Lush Prize for her work on “Animal-free approaches for engineering physiologically relevant humanized skin models using 3D bioprinting technology”. During the award ceremony in London on November 10, 2017, Carolina received a hand-sculpted hare and a monetary prize of 10.000 £. She says of this prize, "This money is going to be used to promote my career by supporting my research and professional development."
The Lush Prize is a partnership between Lush and Ethical Consumer to support animal-free toxicology and is designed to reward groups or individuals working in the field of cruelty-free scientific research, awareness-raising and, lobbying to help bring an end to animal testing. The £250,000 annual prize fund (which has again been boosted this year by an extra £80,000 for Young Researchers in Asia and the Americas) is the biggest prize in the non-animal testing sector, and the only one to focus solely on the replacement of animal tests. It seeks to focus pressure on safety testing for consumer products in a way that complements projects already addressing the animal testing of medicines.
Carolina is currently under the guidance of Dr. Pankaj Karande through a scholarship from the Science without Borders program in Brazil, which is supplemented by RPI.
For more information on the Lush Award and Caronlina's project, please visit:
http://lushprize.org/2017-prize/2017-prize-winners/
To see the video presentation at the Lush award ceremony concerning her work, please visit:
https://vimeo.com/242210420