2003 Grand Prize Winner
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Lei Wang received the grand prize for his essay,
"Expansion of the Genetic Code." Dr. Wang was born in Tonggu, China. He
attended Peking University and received his bachelor's degree in organic
chemistry in 1994 and his master's degree in physical chemistry in 1997.
At Peking University, he did research in Dr. Zhongfan Liu's laboratory,
where he used scanning probe microscopy to investigate the properties
of nanoparticles. He went to the United States to pursue graduate studies
at the University of California at Berkeley. Under the guidance of Dr.
Peter G. Schultz, Dr. Wang developed a general method for genetically
encoding unnatural amino acids into proteins in live cells. After receiving
his Ph.D. in 2002, Dr. Wang joined Dr. Roger Y. Tsien's group at the University
of California, San Diego, for postdoctoral training as a Merck Fellow
of the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation.
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Regional Winners
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North America
Jeff Levsky for his essay,
"Simple Single Cells," based on his Ph.D. research in the laboratory of
Dr. Robert Singer at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva
University, New York. Dr. Levsky was born in Washington, DC, in 1978. He
grew up all over the world in places including Alabama, South Korea, Washington
state, Maryland, and West Germany, alternating between dependents-of-military
and Jewish private schools. He graduated from Northwestern University in
Evanston, Illinois, in 1998 with a bachelor's degree in both Physiology
and Computing and Information Systems. He went to New York to join the Medical
Scientist Training Program at Albert Einstein University. Here, in Dr. Singer's
group, he studied the development of single-cell gene expression profiling
technology. Dr. Levsky is currently completing his clinical training, juggling
his hours between the Jewish study hall, his family, and Bronx hospitals.
He is searching for a residency position to pursue a physician-scientist
career in imaging and computing.
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Europe
Rut Carballido-López for her essay,
"Shaping Bacteria: The Actin-Like Prokaryotic Cytoskeleton," based on research
performed under the guidance of Prof. Jeff Errington at the Sir William
Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford, UK. Dr. Carbadillo-Lopez
left her home town of Barcelona, Spain, at the age of 17 to attend the National
Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA) in Lyon, France, and graduated in 1996
with an engineering degree in biochemistry. After 17 months in the Vitamin
Research Department of F. Hoffmann-La Roche in Basel, Switzerland, she realized
that rather than focus on the practical application of biotechnologies,
she would prefer to work to elucidate unresolved questions in biology. To
this end, she obtained a master's degree in general microbiology at the
Pasteur Institute of Paris and, after being awarded a Marie Curie Research
Training grant from the European Community, joined the University of Oxford
as a graduate student. Working as a graduate student in the laboratory of
Prof. Jeff Errington, she showed that bacteria possess an actin-like cytoskeleton
that is the determinant of cell shape. During this time, she acquired a
large variety of genetic, biochemical, and cytological techniques and, most
importantly, discovered the beauty hidden in bacteria and her passion for
research. After receiving her Ph.D. in 2002, she was awarded a Long-Term
Fellowship from the Human Frontiers Science Program Organization for postdoctoral
training. She also received the Young Microbiologist of the Year Award (2001),
the Promega Young Life Scientist of the Year Award (2002), and the Nat Sternberg
Thesis Prize (2003).
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Ravi Kamath for his essay,
"Functional Genomics in C. elegans Using RNAi," based on
his Ph.D. research performed in the laboratory of Dr. Julie Ahringer at
the Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Institute of Cancer and Developmental
Biology. Dr. Kamath was born in Ohio and graduated from high school in Overland
Park, Kansas. He began doing molecular biology research at the age of 13,
when he worked in the laboratory of Dr. Joan Hunt at the University of Kansas
Medical Center. After completing an undergraduate degree in Biochemical
Sciences at Harvard University, he entered Harvard Medical School in 1997.
Between his second and third years of medical school, he took time off in
order to pursue graduate studies in Genetics at the University of Cambridge
as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellow. Working in Dr.
Ahringer's laboratory, he developed methods for rapidly inactivating genes
in C. elegans on a large scale and applied these techniques to perform
the first comprehensive study of gene function in any animal. The technologies
he developed have been shared with other laboratories, where they are being
used to expedite the discovery of genes involved in a wide range of biological
processes. He completed his Ph.D. degree in 2002 and has since returned
to complete his medical degree at Harvard, where he is currently in his
final year.
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All Other Countries
Qing Chen for her essay,
"Induction of bgl Operon Expression in E. coli: Novel Insights
into Sensor Stimulation and Signaling," based on research in the laboratory
of Prof. Orna Amster-Choder at the Hebrew University Medical School, Israel.
Dr. Chen was born in 1964 in Jinan, China. She received her M.D. degree
in 1986 and a master's degree in biochemistry in 1991 from the Medical School
of Shandong University. She worked as a lecturer in the Department of Biochemistry
at the Medical School of Beijing University for 2 years before going to
Jerusalem to pursue Ph.D. studies in the Department of Molecular Biology
at Hebrew University. Under the mentorship of Prof. Amster-Choder, she studied
the molecular basis for sensing and signaling, using the bacterial bgl
sensory system as a model system. In 2002, she was awarded her Ph.D. degree
and received the Kennedy-Leigh Prize for outstanding Ph.D. research performed
at the Hebrew University and the Faculty of Medicine Prize for an excellent
dissertation. In 1998, she left Israel for a research associate position
in the laboratory of Prof. Robert Kadner at the University of Virginia,
where she continued her research on signal transduction in E. coli.
She is currently a research scientist in the laboratory of Dr. Malabi Venkatensan
at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Maryland. Her aim is to identify
unique genomic virulence determinants of enterotoxigenic E. coli
and eventually to develop new vaccines against the relevant diseases. Dr.
Chen is married with two wonderful children.
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David Lando for his essay, "The
Huff and Puff of HIF Regulation," based on his Ph.D. research carried out
in the laboratory of Dr. Murray Whitelaw in the Department of Molecular
Biosciences at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Dr. Lando was born
in 1969 in Mildura, a small Australian country town. He obtained his B.Sc.
degree in 1990 from Flinders University of South Australia. After spending
6 years working as a scientist for a local biotechnology company, Dr. Lando
decided to return to university to work toward a doctoral degree. Under
the guidance of Dr. Whitelaw, he studied the mechanisms of regulation of
hypoxia-inducible transcription factors. After completing his Ph.D., he
joined the laboratory of Dr. Tony Kouzarides at the Wellcome Trust Cancer
Research UK Institute in Cambridge, where he currently holds a C. J. Martin
Fellowship from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia.
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We thank our distinguished panel of judges:
Dr. Michael Hengartner (University of Zurich), Dr. Barbara Jasny
(Science), Dr. Donald Kennedy (Science), Dr. Judith Kimble
(University of Wisconsin), and Dr. Steven McKnight (University of Texas
Southwestern Medical Center).
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