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PHARMACIA BIOTECH & SCIENCE PRIZE
1997 Grand Prize Winner

Pharmacia Biotech and Science are pleased to announce the 1997 grand prize winner of the Pharmacia Biotech & Science Prize for Young Scientists. The winner of the 1997 grand prize in molecular biology was chosen from among the regional winners from four geographical areas: North America, Europe, Japan, and all other countries. The grand prize has been awarded to a regional winner from Europe, Christine Jacobs, for her essay on b-lactam antibiotic resistance and cell wall sensing in Gram-negative bacteria. The essay describes her doctoral research under the shared supervision of Jean-Marie Frère (Center for Protein Engineering, University of Liège, Belgium) and Staffan Normark (Microbiology and Tumor Biology Center, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden).

Christine Jacobs

Dr. Jacobs was born on 27 December 1968 in Liège, Belgium. In 1991, she was awarded an MS in biochemistry at the University of Liège, Belgium. For her masters thesis on b-lactamase kinetics, she spent 6 months in the laboratory of Staffan Normark at the Department of Molecular Microbiology, Washington University Medical School, St. Louis, where she became interested in bacterial resistance to antibiotics. She received her doctoral training in three different laboratories, taking advantage of the expertise and skills of each. She spent the first year in the laboratory of Staffan Normark at Washington University Medical School, St. Louis. Then, to extend her knowledge in protein chemistry, she went back to the laboratory of Jean-Marie Frère at the University of Liège. Later, in a very fruitful scientific collaboration with James T. Park, she spent 5 months at the Department of Molecular Biology and Microbiology, Tufts University Health Sciences Campus, Boston, to study the relation between b-lactamase regulation and cell wall metabolism. She completed her doctoral work at Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, in the laboratory of Staffan Normark. From 1991 to 1996, she was supported by a Belgian American Educational Foundation fellowship in St. Louis, a short-term European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) fellowship at Boston, and a 4-year fellowship from the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique in Liège and Stockholm. Her Ph.D. in biochemistry was awarded by the University of Liège in 1996. She is currently an EMBO postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Lucy Shapiro at Stanford University Medical School's Department of Developmental Biology.

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Regional Winners

Georg Halder

Europe: Georg Halder for his essay "Development and Evolution of the Eye: Pax-6 and the Compound Eye of Drosophila Melanogaster," which is based on his research conducted in the laboratory of Walter Gehring, University of Basel, Switzerland.

James Brownell

North America: James Brownell for his essay, "The Identification of GCN5-Related Proteins as Histone Acetyltransferases Links Chromatin Acetylation and Gene Activation," which is based on his doctoral research in the Department of Biology at Syracuse University in the laboratory of David Allis.

Mitsuharu Hattori

Japan: Mitsuharu Hattori for his essay "Platelet Activating Factor and Convolutions of the Brain," which describes research conducted in the laboratory of Keizo Inoue in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Tokyo.

The other finalists were as follows: from North America, Dirksen Bussiere, William John Feaver, Su Guo, and Anita Sil; from Europe, Stig Kjaer Hansen and Thorsten Melcher; and from all other countries, Cheryl Brown, Natalia Koudinova, and Michael Packer.

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To read the essays written by previoius years' winners, see:
1995: www.sciencemag.org/feature/data/pharmacia/1995.shl
1996: www.sciencemag.org/feature/data/pharmacia/1996.shl

How to Apply

The Pharmacia Amersham Biotech & Science Prize for Young Scientists was established to provide support to scientists at the beginning of their careers because both organizations believe that such support is critical for continued scientific progress. In 1998 the prize will recognize outstanding graduate students in molecular biology, from all regions of the world. This international prize will be awarded for the most outstanding thesis in the general area of molecular biology as described in a 1000-word essay. The prize will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm during December 1998, and the winning essay will be published in Science Stay tuned to this site for more information.

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