This month’s image captures the BCD Group valiantly juggling holiday cheer with the controlled chaos of wrapping up a fantastic year. Dressed as elite festive toy-soldier-scientists, the team is not only finishing their latest projects but also secretly plotting the ones that will launch in the new year, preferably with fewer emergency meetings.

It’s been a spectacular year for the group, with new papers published, talented graduates taking off, exciting projects kicking in, and fresh recruits joining the madness. All of it fueled by a research ecosystem that keeps growing and evolving, from bioabsorbable metals and next-generation polymers to new ways of controlling their degradation, enhancing their biocompatibility, and combining them into increasingly clever composite systems.

It has been a year of ideas turning into prototypes, materials behaving better than expected (and sometimes much worse, which still counts as science), and projects pushing us toward smarter, safer, and more sustainable biomedical solutions. Every experiment, every simulation, and every strategically timed coffee has contributed to the BCD Group’s momentum as we continue building the kind of science we want to see in the world.

Basically, if it bubbles, degrades, shines, dissolves, or glows suspiciously, the BCD lab has probably tested it.

Surrounded by glowing flasks, blinking consoles, and decorations, the team is hard at work engineering the perfect combination of science, innovation, and seasonal fun. And as they wrap up this year of discoveries, they send you their very best wishes for this end-of-year season, may it be inspiring, fulfilling, and full of good moments shared with the people who matter most. ✨🧪🌟