Jacques Fellay wins 2017 SSI Award
Jacques Fellay
Professor Jacques Fellay was awarded the Swiss Society for Infectious Diseases (SSI) award for his work on severe respiratory illness in children.
The Swiss Society for Infectious Diseases (SSI) was founded in 1990 with the mission to promote and develop education, research, and awareness on infectious diseases in Switzerland and Europe. Today, the Society counts 340 members, and partners with the Swiss Academic Foundation for Education in Infectious Diseases (SAFE-ID) and the Swiss Society of Tropical and Travel Medicine (SSTMP).
This year, the SSI and SAFE-ID awarded two prizes, each in the amount of 15,000 CHF. Professor Jacques Fellay, whose lab at EPFL focuses on human genomics of infection and immunity, won the SSI award in the category “basic research in infectious diseases”. Specifically, Professor Fellay was awarded for his recent PNAS paper, which identified mutations of the IFIH1 gene that cause severe viral respiratory infections in children (EPFL press release).
Jacques Fellay with Angela Huttner from University Hospital in Geneva, who won the SSI award in the category “clinical research in infectious diseases” for her work on a vaccine against extraintestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli (credit: SSI)