Paul Murima wins 2017 SwissTB award
Paul Murima © P. Murima/EPFL (logo © SwissTB)
The Swiss Foundation for Tuberculosis Research has given their annual award to Paul Murima (EPFL) for his work on M. tuberculosis. The award is shared with Michael Zimmermann from ETHZ.
The Swiss Foundation for Tuberculosis Research (SwissTB) is a non-for profit organization founded in 2001 with the purpose of encouraging “research against tuberculosis in Switzerland, and to promote the exchange of information and the collaboration between the different research groups in Switzerland”. The disease is caused by the pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which infects one-third of the world’s population today and kills two million men, women, and children every year.
Each year the Foundation awards fundamental research into better vaccines, drugs, and other efficient strategies against M. tuberculosis. This year, the award is shared between Paul Murima from EPFL’s Laboratory of Microbiology and Microsystems (now at Roche) and Michael Zimmermann at ETHZ (now at Yale) for their paper in Nature Communications: “A rheostat mechanism governs the bifurcation of carbon flux in mycobacteria.” (EPFL press release here). Murima’s research focused on how the metabolism of individual bacteria such as M. tuberculosis responds to the constant changes in their nutrient environments.
Murima did his graduate training in drug development, first at the University of Basel before joining the Novartis Institute of Biomedical Research in Singapore for his PhD. During his tenure in the Laboratory of Microbiology & microsystems he completed his MBA studies and is now at Roche in Basel.
The prize winners were announced during the 26th Tuberkulose-Symposium in Magglingen. The SwissTB award includes a monetary prize of 10,000 CHF and will be given in a ceremony during the CHEST meeting of the Swiss Pneumology Society in Basel (7-9 June 2017).