Dr. Stefan Hell, director of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany, received the prize for inventing STED Microscopy. This increases the resolution limit of optical microscopes, making it possible to observe living skin cells over time (as well as facilitating other research that necessitates clearly distinguishing between two objects closer than 200 nanometers apart).
At Beiersdorf, Dr. Hall’s invention and related fluorscence technology are integral to the work Dr. Frank Fischer does as head of the company’s Research Microscopy Lab. “Beiersdorf hopes to gain new insight into the complex processes of skin aging and to research how cellular structures change through aging. The goal is to stop structural changes or even reverse them with cosmetic treatment,” explained the company in a press release.
Always attuned to the possibilities that disparate information holds for skin care, Beiersdorf conducts “research into every single aspect of the skin. There is a lot of useful information from medical research, even from cancer biology that we can relate to skin care and use in the cosmetics industry,” Horst Wenck, corporate vice president of R&D at Beiersdorf told Cosmetics Design in an exclusive interview a few months back.