Three European Scientists Awarded Medicine Prize

The Louis-Jeantet Foundation for Medicine (Geneva, Switzerland) has announced that three innovative scientists in Europe have been awarded the foundation's 2003 Prize for Medicine. The prize has been awarded every year since 1986 and its mission is to foster innovative biomedical research in Europe. Winners, who must be engaged in basic or clinical medical research, receive a cumulative award amounting to a maximum of 1.2 million euros to carry out their research projects, as well as a personal prize.

Wolfgang Baumeister, director of the Max-Planck Institute for Biochemistry (Martinsried, Germany), won for his work on the proteasome and for the further development of cryoelectron tomography. This method uses an electron microscope but analyzes objects in a rapidly frozen state that preserves their structure. With the prize, Prof. Baumeister proposes to push electron tomography to still higher resolution and to investigate the 3D architecture of the molecular complexes that form the synapses of nerve cells. Prof. Baumeister is a citizen of Germany.

Riitta Hari, a professor at the Academy of Finland and the head of the Brain Research Unit at the Low Temperature Laboratory of Helsinki University of Technology (Finland), won for her work in improving magnetoencephalography (MEG), which detects tiny changes in the magnetic field associated with brain activity. With the prize, Prof. Hari plans to study the effects of observed pain on brain activation of the observer, in order to contribute to our understanding of the neural basis of social cognition. Prof. Hari is a citizen of Germany.

Nikos Logothetis, director of the Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybermetics and head of the department of physiology of cognitive processes in Tubingen (Germany), won for his progress in understanding the perception of visual images by the brain, working with trained monkeys. This led to the discovery that changes in local oxygenation, measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), are the result of incoming signals rather than outgoing action potentials. With the prize, he wants to develop new biochemical probes that detect neuronal activity in real-time. Prof. Logothetis is a citizen of Greece.




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Max Planck, Martinsried
Helsinki U.
Max-Planck, Tubingen