Nobel laureate Ada Yonath to speak at Excellence Symposium 2016
The structural biologist Ada Yonath from Israel decoded the structure of ribosomes and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for it in 2009. On June 15 she will be speaking at the "Excellence Symposium 2016" at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel, organized by stipendiaries of the Fellowship for Excellence program.
31 May 2016
Since 2006, the Biozentrum has promoted the careers of talented, young scientists through the Fellowships for Excellence program (FFE), which was initially established with support from the Werner Siemens Foundation. For the tenth anniversary of the FFE program, a symposium will take place at the Biozentrum on June 14 and 15, at which outstanding researchers, will present their work in various talks during the two days.
Pioneer in analyzing ribosomes
The Keynote Lecture will be presented by Ada Yonath, Nobel laureate in Chemistry in 2009, who will speak about combating antibiotic resistance while preserving the microbiome and minimizing environmental hazards. The Professor of Structural Biology is also the Director of the Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly at Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. She played a leading role in the analysis of the structure of ribosomes and consequently, elucidated the mode of action of many antibiotics.
Among the 15 internationally renowned guest speakers are the cell biologist Prof. Anthony Hyman, Director of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, and Prof. Laurent Keller from the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Lausanne, where he investigates the evolution of social behavior in ants.
Ada Yonath: Combating species-specific antibiotics resistance while preserving the microbiome and minimizing environmental hazards. Wednesday, 15 June 2016, 4.45 – 5.30 pm, Pharmazentrum, Lecture Hall 1, Klingelbergstrasse 50, 4056 Basel.
Fellowships for Excellence
The symposium, which is organized by the current Biozentrum FFE Fellows, takes place every other year. Since the FFE program was launched in 2006, a total of 45 talented PhD students - about half of them women - from 15 different nations, have taken part. From hundreds of applicants from around the world, ten outstanding young scientists are selected annually by the Biozentrum to participate. The fellows are provided with access to the Biozentrum PhD program, as well as the unique opportunity to experience two research groups before they make their choice, and other attractive incentives. The FEE program thus promotes scientific excellence and the career prospects of these doctoral candidates.
