And this year's winner of the Körber European Science Award is...
The 2007 Körber European Science Award has been presented to the chemistry Professor Peter Seeberger for his pioneering research into developing vaccines against illnesses such as malaria. The Swiss scientist won the €750,000 prize for his success in artificially producing complex carbohydrates, called glycans, of pathogens known to cause diseases. Using the automated oligosaccharide synthesizer that he developed, Seeberger and his colleagues arrived at the promising discovery. Furthermore, they were successful in transforming the glycans into vaccine candidates for illnesses such as leishmaniasis, malaria, AIDS, anthrax and tuberculosis. 'The vaccine candidates have already demonstrated their effectiveness in animal experiments, and the malaria vaccine is to be tested on humans for the first time next year,' a statement by the Körber Foundation reads. The award was presented at a ceremony at the Hamburg City Hall on 7 September, where First Mayor Ole von Beust welcomed such illustrious guests as Thomas Reiter, an astronaut at the European Space Agency, who also delivered the keynote speech. The Körber Prize honours European scientists for their conceptual approach to forward-looking topics and their pioneering research. The award winner is chosen by an international Trustee Committee chaired by the President of the Max Planck Society, Professor Peter Gruss. Peter Seeberger studied chemistry at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and received his doctorate in biochemistry in 1995 from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he was a Fulbright scholar. In 1998, he was appointed Assistant Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he became the Firmenich Associate Professor of Chemistry in 2002. Professor Seeberger has received numerous prizes and awards for his work in chemistry and biochemistry. He moved to his current position as professor of organic chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich in 2003.
Countries
Switzerland, Germany