By the end of year 2007, Rui L. Reis, Director of the 3B’s Research Group, received the award "BES Inovação" (sponsored by BES, a Portuguese Bank), in the category of forests, with the project entitled "New composite materials Cork-Polymer". This project, done in cooperation with the Portuguese company Corticeira Amorim SGPS, with whom the research group has been strengthening his partnership, having as goal the development of new products and applications made of or with cork.
In the 2007 Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Chapter of the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS-AP) that took place in Tokyo from 3 to 5 December, a researcher and PhD student from the group, Ana Rita Costa Pinto, received the prize “Outstanding Student/Young Investigator Award” for the work entitled “Biological Performance of Human Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells Cultured onto Novel Melt Based Chitosan Polyester Scaffolds”, supervised by Prof. Nuno Neves and co-supervised by Prof. Rui L.
In October 2007, Prof. Isabel Dias and Prof. Carlos Viegas, researchers from the 3B’s Research Group and professors in the University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, were attributed the prestigious “Pfizer Award for Clinical Research 2007”, handed over to the awardees in Lisbon on the 9th of October by the Portuguese Minister of Health.
In July 13, 2007, the company Stemmatters, a spin-off from the 3B’s Research Group – University of Minho, was awarded the National Prize for Innovation START – promoted by the Portuguese bank BPI, Microsoft and the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Stemmatters intends to capitalize all research activity developed in the last decade by the 3B’s Research Group, one of the European and Worldwide leaders in this field of research, making the pathway to apply the new regenerative therapies to clinic.
In May 2007, the Executive Commission of the Federation of the European Societies of Materials decided, in their recent meeting in Milan, to attribute to Prof. João Mano the FEMS award in the field of Science and Technology of Materials. This distinction is attributed every two years by the Federation to those researchers that have distinguished themselves through their work on the field of Science and Technology of Materials.
Ana L. Oliveira, Student Travel Acheivement Recognition awarded by The Society for Biomaterials to the work “Studies on the Formation of Biomimetic Apatite Layers on 3D-Printed Biodegradable Polymeric Scaffolds: Effect of Different Dynamic Coating Routes”, presented on the 31st Annual Meeting of the Society from Biomaterials, Pittsburgh, US, 2006, “as an outstanding contribution to the Society For Biomaterials”.
Joaquim Miguel Oliveira, Distinguished with the Best Student Award (Oral Presentation), for the paper entitled “Innovative Technique for the Preparation of Porous Bilayer Hydroxyapatite/Chitosan Scaffolds for Osteochondral Applications”, as part of the 18th International Symposium on Ceramics in Medicine - Bioceramics 18, held in Kyoto, Japan, December 2005.
Also in October, the School of Engineering of the University of Minho revealed the results for the “Prémio EEUM – Melhor Tese de Doutoramento 2008” (School of Engineering Award for the Best PhD Thesis in 2008) and decided to award the thesis entitled: “New Biomimetic Acellular Routes for Pre-Calcification of Implant Materials, Carrier Particles and Porous Scaffolds”, by Isabel Maria Bacelo Leonor, researcher from the 3B’s Research Group, Department of Polymer Engineering.