Andrea Ablasser wins Friedrich Miescher Award
Andrea Ablasser. Credit: EPFL - Alain Herzog
EPFL Professor Andrea Ablasser has won one of the two Friedrich Miescher Awards for 2021.
The Friedrich Miescher Award is Switzerland’s highest distinction for outstanding achievements in biochemistry. It was established in 1969 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the discovery of DNA by the Basel scientist Friedrich Miescher, and is now donated by the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, under the patronage of the MCB section of Life Sciences Switzerland (LS2). The awardees are scientists under the age of 40 who either hold Swiss citizenship or have carried out their research in Switzerland.
This year, one of the two winners of the Friedrich Miescher Award is Professor Andrea Ablasser at EPFL’s School Life Sciences. Professor Ablasser shares the award with Professor Prisca Liberali at the FMI.
Professor Ablasser’s research focuses on understanding how cells sense infection or cellular damage and on elucidating the consecutive signaling events. “I am deeply honored to be named a recipient of this year’s Friedrich Miescher Award,” she says. “It is an enormous recognition of our contributions to understand the cGAS-STING pathway, a fundamental mechanism of immunity.”
The award ceremony will take place online during the LS2 Annual Meeting and on Wednesday, February 17th, 2021, from 14:20 to 14:50 CET. https://annual-meeting.ls2.ch/