This biannual award provides financial support to further their innovative research and development initiatives, fostering collaboration and excellence within the RPMI community.
The Research Platform Medical Imaging (RPMI) is proud to support its dedicated members through the RPMI Mobility Award, a biannual financial grant that recognizes and rewards active contributions to the advancement of medical imaging technologies and practices.
In this latest round, three individuals have been selected from a strong pool of candidates to receive the RPMI Mobility Award: Pia Falb, Katarína Benčurová, and David Haberl. Their outstanding achievements, demonstrated commitment, and proactive engagement within the RPMI community have earned them this well-deserved recognition.
In summary, the RPMI Mobility Award celebrates the exceptional efforts of its members while providing meaningful support to fuel their ongoing contributions to innovation and advancement in medical imaging.
Apply today for the next RPMI Mobility Award: Applications are accepted until September 30, 2025. For further details and to apply, please refer to the document https://rpmi.meduniwien.ac.at/ueber-uns/news/rpmi-awards-2025/ . Each applicant can receive up to €1,000!
Biosketches:
Pia Falb, Dipl.-Ing. MSc graduated in the field of Technical Physics from the Technical University of Vienna in 2024. During her Master’s degree, she started working in medical imaging and specifically neuroimaging with PET and MRI. She has completed her Master’s thesis at the Neuroimaging Labs (head: Univ.-Prof. Rupert Lanzenberger, MD, PD, MAE ) at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the Medical University of Vienna. She is currently working on her PhD in the field of Clinical Neurosciences under supervision of Assoc.-Prof. Andreas Hahn, at the lab. The RPMI Mobility and Conference Support will enable her participation at the 17th International Conference on Quantification of Brain function with PET (Brain PET 2025) in Seoul, Republic of Korea, where she will present recent findings on functional PET imaging.
David Haberl, Dipl.-Ing. PhD has been a postdoctoral researcher in the Computational Nuclear Medicine group at the Medical University of Vienna since March 2025. In his research, he focuses on the identification of biomarkers in molecular imaging to improve diagnostics and therapy stratification, using artificial intelligence methods. From 2013 to 2021, he completed his Bachelor's and Master's degree in Physics at the Vienna University of Technology. Since 2021, he has been working at the Medical University of Vienna, where he completed his doctoral studies in the field of computer-aided medical imaging with honours in 2025. He completed parts of his dissertation at the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Applied Metabolomics and at the Institut Curie of the University of Paris-Saclay, among others.
Katarína Benčurová, MSc, is a doctoral student in the PhD Program Medical Imaging at the Medical University of Vienna, working in the Division of Nuclear Medicine. She holds a Master’s degree in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Vienna, where she specialised in Molecular Nutrition. She joined the Division of Nuclear Medicine already for her Master’s Thesis, where she worked with Ap. Prof. Cécile Philippe and Dr. Theresa Balber on the characterisation of PET tracers for the melanin-concentrating hormone receptor 1. Her doctoral research under the supervision of Univ.-Prof. Markus Mitterhauser and Dr. Theresa Balber focuses on the development and application of the in ovo chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) xenograft model for the evaluation of novel radiopharmaceuticals for cancer diagnostics, aiming to provide a fast, cost-efficient and ethically more acceptable alternative for early-stage tracer validation. Katarína was awarded the RPMI Mobility Award for her oral presentation at this year’s European Molecular Imaging Meeting (EMIM) in Bilbao, Spain, entitled “In ovo model for investigation of novel PET antibodies: first experience with [89Zr]Zr-nSucDf-Denosumab and [89Zr]Zr-nSucDf-Atezolizumab”. For more information about Katarína’s research, visit her ResearchGate profile