Gisou van der Goot wins Lelio Orci Award

©Alain Herzog/EPFL
Gisou van der Goot has won the 2015 Lelio Orci Award, recognizing her outstanding research career.
The Award was initiated by Lelio Orci, Professor Emeritus at the University of Geneva, in order to honor outstanding scientists or promising young researchers in cell biology. The 2015 Lilio Orci Award is the first one ever, and the board of trustees of the Lelio Orci Fonds has awarded it to Professor Gisou van der Goot at EPFL.
Professor van der Goot is currently the dean of EPFL’s School of Life Sciences. She studied engineering at the Ecole Centrale de Paris, and received her PhD in Molecular Biophysics from University Paris V, France in 1990. After a three-year postdoc at EMBL, she started her own research group at the department of Biochemistry at the University of Geneva in 1994, and became Associate professor at the Faculty of Medicine in 2001.
After five years, in 2006, van der Goot joined EPFL as full Professor, and co-founded the Global Health Institute. She has been project coordinator of LipidX, a research project embedded in the Swiss Initiative in Systems Biology (SystemsX.ch), since 2008. In 2009, she was jointly awarded the Research prize of the Leenaards Foundation, as well as the Marcel Benoist Prize, marking the first time it was awarded to a woman, and became an EMBO member. In 2011, Professor van der Goot joined the NCCR Chemical Biology, and was President of Life Sciences Switzerland (LS2) from 2012 to 2013, the year that she also received an ERC advanced grant.
Professor van der Goot’s research has focused on the molecular mechanisms of bacterial infection. Her work has illuminated the way that bacterial toxins hijack host cell functions for their benefit, as well as the subsequent response of the cell. One particular paradigm her research has explored extensively is the physiological and pathological roles of anthrax toxin receptors. In her more recent work, Professor van der Goot has carried out extensive research on the mechanisms that control the compartmentalization of mammalian cells and their membranes.
The ceremony took place at the LS2 annual meeting in Lausanne, on February 16, 2016. The Award included a sum of CHF 10,000. As part of the award ceremony, Professor van der Goot presented her work in a public seminar in the lecture hall “Erna Hamburger” (Amphimax). “I am very happy that Lelio Orci has created a prize in Cell Biology, offering to this field the visibility it deserves,” says Professor van der Gout. “Having had the pleasure to know Lelio, enjoy his science and his Italian class, I am very honored to be the first awardee.”