Dr. Zoya Hadzhieva receives the Hightech Award Bavaria in the graduate category.

Dr. Zoya Hadzhieva from the Chair of Biomaterials at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) is one of the outstanding young scientific talents in Bavaria. She was awarded the High-Tech Award Bavaria in the graduate category for her doctoral thesis. The award recognizes excellent university degrees and doctoral theses in engineering at Bavarian universities and institutes of higher education and comes with a prize of €2,000.

Innovative coatings against infections and for improved osseointegration

The focus of the awarded work is on an innovative coating process designed to improve the biocompatibility of medical implants. Metallic implants play a crucial role in orthopedics, but bacterial infections and insufficient bonding between natural bone tissue and the implant remain major challenges. A promising approach to improving implant surfaces is electrophoretic deposition (EPD). This process allows antibacterial and bioactive coatings to be produced on electrically conductive substrates at room temperature. In the course of work on her doctoral thesis, Zoya Hadzhieva deliberately combined natural components such as phytotherapeutics and biopolymers as well as bioactive glasses to develop multifunctional coating systems. She found that the targeted variation of the material composition and layer structure enables the adaptation of the coatings to different biomedical requirements and creates the basis for improved implant surfaces.

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