Business Continues 2020 HFSP Awards 2020 HFSP Nakasone

News Awards Funding

Issue May 2020

0 2 0 0

2020 HFSP Awards

Business continues In spite of the current restrictions due HFSPO has implemented business to the coronavirus, the 2020 HFSP continuity measures to minimise awards were announced as planned disruption on its operations due to the at the end of March. We are delighted coronavirus pandemic. The calls for that so many of the new awardees' HFSP proposals for Research Grants institutions are publicising the new and Fellowships will continue as awards and we have collated a list of the announcements that have come planned this year and we do not to our attention via social media or anticipate any delays with upcoming directly from the awardees or their evaluations. press offices. Read more > Lists of new awards >

2020 HFSP Nakasone Award goes to Angelika Amon

Angelika Amon of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT has been awarded the 2020 HFSP Nakasone Award for 'discovering aneuploidy- induced cellular changes and their contribution to tumorigenesis.'

Read more > From ancient Egypt to Antarctica: Genomic studies of Sacred Ibis mummies and ancient penguins

The Sacred Ibis of Egypt is an historically important species that enabled early researchers to test ideas about the process of biological evolution, 50 years before publication of ‘On the Origin of Species’. An HFSP Program Grant team led by David Lambert used ancient mitogenomes from the Sacred Ibis to understand how the ancient Egyptians were able to mummify about 10,000 birds per year. Similar studies in Antarctica enabled the team to use serial time studies of nuclear genomes of Adélie penguins to shed light on the nature of repeat evolution itself.

Organic ion driven transistors

HFSP Cross-Disciplinary Fellow George Spyropoulos explains how organic ion driven transistors will help us to get closer to having safe, soft and reliable bioelectronic devices and how such devices could be used to treat patients with neurological diseases in the future.

Comings and goings at the HFSP Secretariat

This year has got off to a great start for the HFSP Secretariat with three new staff members joining the team. We are delighted to welcome Olaf Kelm as Chief Operations Officer, Almut Kelber as Director of Research Grants and Shunichi Kanda as Administrative Officer. However, on a sadder note, we had to say goodbye to outgoing Director of Research Grants Geoff Richards and Akira Arai, the previous Administrative Officer.

Geoff Richards

Geoff Richards retired from his position as Director of Research Grants on April 30th, marking the end of an era for HFSP. Geoff will be very much missed by his colleagues at the Secretariat and also by the wider HFSP Research Grant community. You can read all about Geoff's distinguished career via the link below.

Sir James Gowans

HFSPO is saddened by the news that Sir James Gowans passed away on 1st April at the age of 95. Sir James Gowans served as the first Secretary- General of HFSP from 1989 to 1993, bringing a wealth of experience, both scientific and administrative, to the role. He was a renowned biomedical scientist and immunologist, who revealed the role of lymphocytes in the immune response and he had previously served as Secretary of the Medical Research Council of the UK.

Prizes & Awards

We would like to congratulate the following HFSP awardees and alumni:

David Julius, winner of the 2017 HFSP Nakasone Award, and Franz-Ulrich Hartl, HFSP Research Grant alumnus, on receiving the 2020 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.

Masatoshi Takeichi, two-time HFSP Research Grant alumnus, on being one of the winners of the 2020 Canada Gairdner International Awards.

Rosa Cossart, HFSP Fellowship alumna, on winning the Liliane Bettencourt Prize for the Life Sciences and for being one of the winners of the 2020 CNRS Silver Medal.

Elly Tanaka, HFSP Research Grant alumna, on being awarded the 2020 FEBS/EMBO Woman in Science Award.

Clifford Brangwynne and Anthony Hyman, HFSP Research Grant alumni, on winning the 2020 Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences.

Andrea Musacchio, Research Grant and HFSP Fellowship alumnus, on being among the winners of the 2020 Leibniz Prize.

Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, joint winners of the 2016 HFSP Nakasone Award, on receiving the 2020 Wolf Prize in Medicine.

Caroline Dean, HFSP Research Grant alumna, on receiving the 2020 Wolf Prize in Agriculture.

Edward Boyden, two-time HFSP Research Grant alumnus, on being selected for the Royal Society's 2020 Croonian Medal and Lecture.

Marie Manceau, Research Grant alumna, on winning the 2020 Richard Lounsbery Award.

Shraga Schwartz, HFSP Fellowship alumnus, and Yasmine Meroz, HFSP Young Investigator grantee, who are among the laureates of the 2020 Krill Prize awarded by the Wolf Foundation.

Adrian Bird, HFSP Research Grant alumnus, on receiving the 2020 Brain Prize from the Lundbeck Foundation.

Other prizes and awards are listed in the HFSP Annual Reports.

Frontier Science from HFSP Awardees

Uncovering the mechanisms of decentralized vision in sea urchins

An HFSP Program Grant team led by Maria Ina Arnone, together with co-investigators Giancarlo La Camera, Carsten Lueter and Dan-Eric Nilsson, is investigating how sea urchins respond to light in spite of having no eyes.

Resolution revolution The group of HFSP Program Grant alumnus Stefan Hell teamed up with the group of HFSP Young Investigator Grant holder Jonas Ries to demonstrate how MINFLUX, a new super-resolution microscopy technique developed by the Hell group, can achieve an unprecedented optical resolution in 3D and dual-color even in living cells.

New ways to save injured neurons Many neurons in the central nervous system fail to survive following injury or neurodegenerative disease. To find new ways to enhance their resilience, HFSP Long-Term Fellow Inbal Benhar and colleagues took advantage of the fact that neuronal types differ dramatically in their ability to withstand insults. They used single-cell RNA sequencing to identify gene expression programs associated with selective resilience to injury, and showed that altering expression of some of these genes enhances neuronal survival and regeneration.

Impressum

The HFSP Newsletter is issued by the International Human Frontier Science Program Organization (HFSPO). It contains announcements of HFSP-related matters and other information of interest to the support of young scientists and to interdisciplinary research in general. Please tell your friends, colleagues, students, etc. about this mailing list. They can subscribe via a link on the HFSP home page.

Individuals that appear in photos in this issue of HFSP Matters have given prior consent to the use of the photos in the newsletter and on the HFSP website. HFSPO is committed to processing information in accordance with the European Directive for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Please address any suggestions or comments to: [email protected].

The International Human Frontier Science Program Organization (HFSPO) 12 Quai St Jean - BP 10034 67080 Strasbourg CEDEX France