Portfolio

Mark Dingemanse

2022-09-05T09:58:48+02:00

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences has awarded the Heineken Young Scientists Award in the Humanities 2020 to Mark Dingemanse, a linguist at Radboud University Nijmegen. Dingemanse is receiving the award for his research into why languages are the way they are and how using language makes us human.

Mark Dingemanse’s work enjoys international acclaim. The jury praises the way he raises unconventional questions on the “margins” of linguistics, his dedication to open science — making data and methods of analysis freely available to other researchers — and his efforts in communicating science to a wide audience. He has, for example, organised various public events about linguistics and is the co-founder of Stemmen van Afrika [Voices of Africa], a website on the linguistic diversity of Africa.

Research on language
Dingemanse’s research addresses major questions: What do we do with language? What does language do with us? Why are languages the way they are? His work tends to deal with matters that have so far escaped the attention of linguistics, and it therefore regularly leads to new insights. He investigates, for example, the unwritten rules of language, studying words and signals that everyone uses all the time without thinking, like “m-hm,” “huh?”, or “oh!”. Those little words are perhaps the key to our language ability and our social life: without such rapid metacommunication, conversations would constantly get stuck. Dingemanse attempts to discover where such words come from and what their influence is on the structure of language.
His research is primarily fundamental but is also relevant to all kinds of social developments. We are talking more and more to devices, such as the iPhone’s Siri and Google Nest. For this to run smoothly, we need to know more about the structure of conversations, and preferably about their universal structure, i.e. not just limited to a few European languages. Dingemanse’s research can contribute to this.
Another one of his studies focuses on iconicity: how words and gestures can portray meaning. His work in this field reveals why some words are easier to learn than others and what is involved in relating something “with all the smells and colours”. A related line of research focuses on synaesthesia, i.e. how the senses are intermingled with one another. In the course of het Groot Nationaal Onderzoek naar Taal en Zintuigen [the National Survey on Language and the Senses], for example, he and his colleagues discovered that almost everyone — whether they are a synaesthete or not — connects vowels with colours in the same way (for example, “aah” is almost always red and “ee” is lighter than “oo”). Associations like these show how our brain processes sounds.

About the laureate
Mark Dingemanse studied African languages and cultures at Leiden University. He carried out research for his PhD in Ghana, receiving his doctorate cum laude in 2011 at Radboud University Nijmegen. That work contributed to a fundamental shift in research on the relationship between form and meaning in language; in recognition, Dingemanse received the AVT/Anéla Dissertation Award and an Otto Hahn Medal.
He followed up his PhD research by working at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, where he directed a series of interdisciplinary research projects. Since 2018 he has been an associate professor in the Department of Language and Communication at Radboud University, where he leads his own research group. He is also an affiliate research fellow at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour in Nijmegen.
Dingemanse has received various grants, including VENI and VIDI grants from the Dutch Research Council (NWO), and in 2017 was in the top 25 of “talented young scientists” listed by the Dutch edition of New Scientist. In 2015 he and two colleagues were awarded an Ig Nobel Prize “for discovering that the word ‘huh?’ (or its equivalent) seems to exist in every human language”. The Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded for “science that makes you laugh, then think”. The study had already received worldwide media attention.

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Mark Dingemanse

Freddy Rabouw

2022-09-05T10:08:06+02:00

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences has awarded the Heineken Young Scientists Award in the Natural Sciences 2020 to Freddy Rabouw, a physicist/chemist at Utrecht University. Rabouw is receiving the prize for his research on new materials to generate light, for example for solar cells or display screens.

The jury describes Freddy Rabouw as a highly productive researcher who is already an inter­nationally respected authority in his field. He is an inspiration for the master’s degree and PhD students in his group and a gifted instructor, who has already received a prize from his students for his teaching.

Research on materials for light
Rabouw investigates new materials to generate light, for example for solar cells or display screens. The materials he studies are mainly nanocrystals of only a few thousand atoms in size. What he is attempting to understand is how such a nanocrystal can efficiently convert one colour of light into another. This is fundamental research, but with various applications. For example, semiconductor nanocrystals, also known as “quantum dots”, are used in the latest generation of televisions. The challenge, for example, is to narrow down the colour spectrum of the light that is emitted so that the television can display more highly saturated colours, which then appear clearer and brighter. It is difficult, however, to narrow down the colour spectrum if the various nanocrystals are only very slightly different and therefore all emit a slightly different colour light. Dr Rabouw is attempting to identify such differences in properties between nano­crystals, and thus understand what causes these differences.
His work may also have applications in the search for sustainable energy solutions. A certain type of nanocrystal is based, for example, on rare-earth metals, making possible highly exceptional colour conversions. Some can absorb infrared light and then emit visible light. This is exceptional, because infrared light contains less energy per photon than visible light. This property is very useful in the case of solar cells because sunlight contains a large amount of infrared light, which solar cells cannot use to generate electricity. By first using nanocrystals to convert the infrared light into visible light, the solar cell can generate more electricity.

About the laureate
Freddy Rabouw studied chemistry at Utrecht University, receiving his master’s degree (on Nanomaterials: Chemistry & Physics) cum laude. He also gained his PhD in Utrecht cum laude for his research on nanomaterials, after which he spent two years at ETH Zurich with the aid of a Rubicon grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). He returned to Utrecht University as an assistant professor in 2017.
Rabouw has received a number of awards and grants for his work, for example a VENI grant from NWO in 2017 and in 2019 an NWO “KLEIN” fundamental research grant (ENW-KLEIN).

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Freddy Rabouw

Anna van Duijvenvoorde

2022-09-05T10:11:48+02:00

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences has awarded the Heineken Young Scientists Award in the Social Sciences 2020 to Anna van Duijvenvoorde, a developmental psychologist at Leiden University. Van Duijvenvoorde is receiving the award for her research on the development of the brain and behaviour in adolescents.

The jury describes Anna van Duijvenvoorde as an outstanding researcher who is able to make her work accessible to a wider group of interested parties. She is curious and innovative, but also a bridge-builder who is part of an impressive network of top researchers. She inspires and supports young scientists. Above all, she is a researcher who dares to steer her own course, qualities that are indispensable for carrying out challenging top-class research and training young researchers.

Research on development of the brain
Van Duijvenvoorde’s research investigates how the brain and behaviour of teenagers change. During teenage years, the brain undergoes an important development. In this phase we learn to empathise better with others, and our peers become more important. Van Duijvenvoorde wants to know how these changes affect the choices that teenagers make. She attempts
to answer such questions as: Why teenagers do find unfamiliar risks interesting? How do they discover who they can trust? And what motivates them? Her work involves fundamental research but can have important social applications. For example, her research on how young people learn can help understand the impact of online education during the corona crisis.

About the laureate
Anna van Duijvenvoorde studied psychology at the University of Amsterdam, graduating cum laude in 2007. She also completed her PhD research in developmental psychology cum laude. While working on her PhD, she spent several months in New York, doing research at Colombia University and at the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology. Since 2019, she has been an associate professor in the Developmental and Educational Psychology Unit at Leiden University.
Van Duijvenvoorde has received numerous major grants for her research, including a Sara van Dam project grant from the Academy and an Open Research Area grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

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Anna van Duijvenvoorde

Xiaowei Zhuang

2022-08-01T15:00:54+02:00

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences has awarded the Dr H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics 2018 to Xiaowei Zhuang, Professor of Physics, Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University in Cambridge (USA).

Examining the behaviour of molecules in living cells
Xiaowei Zhuang received the Dr H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics for her groundbreaking work on developing high-resolution imaging methods and their use in investigating a variety of fundamental biological problems.
Xiaowei Zhuang uses revolutionary imaging methods with single-molecule sensitivity to visualise what happens deep inside living cells. Thanks to the pioneering work of Zhuang and her team, it is now possible to visualise and track the behaviour of virions, RNA molecules and cytoskeleton filaments in living cells.
Her work builds on her own invention, STochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy (STORM), one of the first and most popular methods of ‘super-resolution’ imaging, which overcomes the diffraction limit of light to produce much sharper images than possible in conventional light microscopy and on a vast scale.
STORM uses fluorescent dyes that are activated at different times, making it possible to localise individual molecules and thus generate images of hitherto undreamed-of clarity.
Zhuang’s paper announcing her invention of STORM in 2006 was a milestone in the development of super-resolution microscopy. Zhuang herself is pioneering the application of such methods and using them to seek answers to longstanding, fundamental questions about the machinery of biological cells.

Researcher
Xiaowei Zhuang was born in Rugao (China) in 1972. She studied in China for several years but moved to the United States after receiving her Bachelor’s in Physics in 1991. She obtained her PhD from the University of California in Berkeley in 1996 and conducted her thesis research on non-linear optical studies of liquid crystals and polymers under the supervision of Dr Yuen-Ron Shen.
Zhuang continued her career as a Chodorow Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Dr Steven Chu at Stanford University. She arrived at Harvard University in Cambridge in 2001 and accepted a position there in 2005 as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.
In 2014, Zhuang was appointed David B. Arnold Professor of Science at Harvard University and a year later became Director of the university’s Center for Advanced Imaging.
Zhuang is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has received many honours and awards, including the Sackler International Prize in Biophysics (2011) and the Lennart Nilsson Award (2017). In 2017, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Delft University of Technology.

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Video interview with Xiaowei Zhuang, laureate of the Dr H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics 2018

Introduction to the work of Xiaowei Zhuang, laureate of the Dr H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics 2018

Erik van Lieshout

2022-08-01T16:31:45+02:00

Dutch visual artist Erik van Lieshout has been selected as laureate of the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art 2018. The jury for the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art has praised Erik van Lieshout’s work for its radical, personal and confrontational nature.

Art
In his unique, tragicomic style, Van Lieshout puts his finger on what ails society. His work never flags, continues to grow and is pure: he is not out to preach. He enters into dialogue with groups who others often give a wide berth: ghetto-dwellers, junkies, drifters, and right-wing or left-wing extremists. He raises questions about drugs, sex, violence and overregulation. There is no taboo or danger that Erik van Lieshout tries to avoid; on the contrary, he makes a beeline for them and tries to find a dialogue.

Artist
Erik van Lieshout (born in Deurne in 1968) lives and works in Rotterdam. He studied at the Academy of Art and Design in ‘s Hertogenbosch and Ateliers ’63 in Haarlem (1990-1992). His work consists of drawings, collages, sculptures and videos, often combined into multimedia installations. He always features in his own videos.
 ‘Erik van Lieshout explodes into our consciousness,’ was how one reviewer recently described Van Lieshout’s exhibition I am in Heaven (Anton Kern Gallery, 2015). As a Manifesta 10 artist (2014), he spent two months overhauling the basement of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, along with the seventy or so stray cats that live there. He sketched and filmed the process. While it appears to document the overhaul, Van Lieshout’s film The Basement (2014) is really about Russia under Putin, gay rights, the seizure of the Crimea, censorship and Pussy Riot. This short film was projected in a 50-metre-long tunnel made of plywood and carpet and lined with copies of politically charged sketches and photographs of the cats in the basement. Clips of this work reappear in his longer film WORK (2015). Viewers are overwhelmed by a whirlwind of images, impressions, snippets of text, animations, crudely fashioned props, raw charcoal drawings and film images shot with a handheld camera that show Van Lieshout talking to himself and others about idealism, utopia, harsh reality and the position that an uncompromising artist tries to claim in all of it. His work can be found in Dutch and international private and museum collections, including the MoMa in New York. In 2003, he was selected to be the Dutch entry for the Venice Biennale.

Works of art

Video

Introduction to the work of Erik van Lieshout, laureate of the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art 2018

Fragment of Work by Erik van Lieshout (2015)

Fragment of Die Insel by Erik van Lieshout (2016)

Fragment of G.O.A.T. by Erik van Lieshout (2017)

Peter F.M. Carmeliet

2022-08-01T17:58:37+02:00

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences has awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Medicine 2018 to Peter Carmeliet, Professor of Medicine at the University of Leuven (Belgium).

The effects of growth factors on blood vessels and nerve cells
Peter Carmeliet received the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Medicine for his research into the effects of growth factors on endothelial and nerve cells and for his efforts to develop treatments for vascular and neurological disorders based on his research findings.
Peter Carmeliet is world-renowned for his studies on growth factors and their effects, both in health and disease. For several decades now, he has been at the forefront of research investigating how growth factors control vascular endothelial cells at the molecular level.
Carmeliet studied vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in particular and discovered that it also affects the growth of nerve fibres (axons). He discovered that placental growth factor (PIGF) affects the development of blood vessels and nerve bundles in embryos but also plays an important role in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other neurodegenerative diseases.
More recently, Carmeliet showed how vascular endothelial cells regulate the transport of fatty acids and sugars to underlying tissues, thereby playing a critical role in cardiovascular diseases and cancer.
Basic research of this kind may eventually lead to new therapeutic interventions, for example in the treatment of paediatric brain tumours, metastasis and neurodegeneration. Carmeliet is also attempting to develop new therapies based on his research into PIGF. The antibodies that he has developed are currently being tested clinically in patients with medulloblastoma and diabetic retinopathy.

Researcher
Peter Carmeliet was born in Leuven, Belgium, in 1959. While studying medicine at Leuven, he also trained at the University of Maryland in Baltimore (USA) and the University of California in San Francisco (USA). He received his PhD from the University of Leuven in 1989.
Carmeliet’s post-doctoral appointments include positions at Harvard Medical School (Boston, USA), the Whitehead Institute at MIT (Cambridge, USA), the University of Leuven, and the University of Brussels.
He founded his own research group in Leuven in 1996 and was appointed a full professor there in 1998. The following year, he was appointed professor at Maastricht University. From 2008 to 2015, he was Director of the Centre for Cancer Biology (CCB) at the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB). There are now more than sixty researchers in his group.
Carmeliet is a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. His many awards and honours include the Ernst Jung Medical Award (2010), the Joseph Maisin Prize for Excellence (2010) and the European Academy of Sciences’ Blaise Pascal Medal in Medicine and Life Sciences (2011). He has an honorary doctorate from Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt (Germany).

Video

Video interview with Peter Carmeliet, laureate of the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Medicine 2018

Introduction to the work of Peter Carmeliet, laureate of the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Medicine 2018

John R. McNeill

2022-08-18T14:14:31+02:00

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences has awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for History 2018 to John R. McNeill, Professor of History at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. (USA).

Storyteller and investigator of unparalleled vision
John R. McNeill received the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for History for his important work in integrating two recent branches of the study of history: global history and environmental history.
John McNeill is best known for his book Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (2000), in which he tells the story of human activity during the previous century and its impact on the Earth. He describes how economic, demographic, social and technological changes influenced every aspect of the Earth’s environment; conversely, he shows how the natural environment has often had a dramatic impact on the course of human history. In McNeill’s view, however, the changes that took place in the 20th century were on an unprecedented scale.
As he often does, McNeill drew inspiration from many different disciplines, including the natural sciences, earth science, the technical sciences, archaeology and agricultural science. In doing so, he helped to integrate two recent branches of the study of history: global history and environmental history.
His work is exceptional for the apparent ease with which he weaves centuries, continents, cultures, scientific disciplines and languages into a single narrative, and for his unparalleled ability to draw from sources in all these fields.
Thanks to his unique perspective, fellow historians have new questions to investigate. His lucid, precise, sparkling writing style, humorous and erudite, has enchanted scores of readers.

Researcher
John R. McNeill was born in Chicago (IL, USA) in 1954. After receiving his Bachelor’s from Swarthmore College in Swarthmore (PA, USA) and spending a year teaching Geography and Economics in Athens (Greece), he completed his Master’s in History at Duke University in Durham (NC, USA). He earned his PhD at the same university in 1981 for his study of the relationship between the French and Spanish empires and their Atlantic colonies in the 18th century.
McNeill became a member of the History faculty at Georgetown University in Washington DC (USA) in 1985. Since 1985, he has also taught at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, a centre for research and teaching on global affairs.
He became a professor at Georgetown University in 1993. Furthermore he had visiting appointments in New Zealand, Paris and Oslo. As an historian, he serves on various environmental boards and committees.
NcNeill is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received numerous honours and awards, including two Fulbrights, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the Toynbee Prize and the World History Association’s Pioneer of World History Award.

Video

Video interview with John McNeill, laureate of the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for History 2018

Introduction to the work of John McNeill, laureate of the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for History 2018

Paul D.N. Hebert

2022-08-01T18:25:47+02:00

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences has awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences 2018 to Paul Hebert, Research Chair in Molecular Biodiversity at the University of Guelph (Canada).

A catalogue for the library of life
Paul Hebert received the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences for his pivotal contribution to developing a genetic barcode capable of classifying every biological species on Earth.
Paul Hebert is known as the ‘father of DNA barcoding’, a taxonomic method that uses a short section of DNA from a standardised region of the genome to identify different species, in the same way a supermarket scanner uses barcodes to identify purchases.
Hebert first raised the possibility of such a method in 2000. He is now the Scientific Director of the International Barcode of Life Project (iBOL), in which researchers from 25 countries are attempting to assign barcodes to millions of species on Earth.
The project has demonstrated that DNA barcoding can speed the discovery of new species and distinguish between separate species that used to be classified as one. Thanks to DNA barcoding, we now have a more precise way of measuring the number of species that inhabit a specific ecosystem and we can analyse complex food chains with much greater accuracy.
The Barcode of Life Project is generating an impressive stream of data. Hebert’s research group is building digital systems to gather, store and analyse all this information and make it available to the community. The database now contains the genetic codes of approximately 600,000 species and is being used by almost 25,000 researchers worldwide.
New methods are bringing the ultimate goal of the project ever closer: a comprehensive inventory of global biodiversity. If the project succeeds, its legacy will yield lasting benefits to humankind.

Researcher
Paul Hebert was born in Kingston, Ontario (Canada) in 1947. He studied Biology at Queen’s University but transferred to the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) for his doctorate in Genetics.
After obtaining his PhD in 1972, Hebert spent three years at Sydney University (Australia) and a year at the Natural History Museum in London as a postdoctoral fellow. Back in Canada, he took up his first research post at the University of Windsor in 1976.
In 1986 he became the Director of the Great Lakes Institute at Windsor; four years later, he was appointed to a chair at the University of Guelph (Canada).
In addition to his professorship, Hebert has also chaired the Huntsman Marine Science Centre; he is currently Scientific Director of the International Barcode of Life Project and Director of the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics.
In 2015, he was invested as an Officer of the Order of Canada. He has received various other honours and prizes, including the Aster Award from the Toronto Botanical Garden. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Waterloo (Canada) and was made an honorary professor of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Zoology.

Video

Video interview with Paul Hebert, laureate of the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences 2018

Introduction to the work of Paul Hebert, laureate of the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences 2018

Nancy Kanwisher

2022-08-18T16:17:09+02:00

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences has awarded the C.L. de Carvalho-Heineken Prize for Cognitive Science 2018 to Nancy Kanwisher, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge (USA).

A region of the brain specialising in facial recognition
Nancy Kanwisher received the C.L. de Carvalho-Heineken Prize for Cognitive Science for her highly original, meticulous and cogent research on the functional organisation of the human brain.
Nancy Kanwisher is an exceptionally innovative and influential researcher in cognitive neuropsychology and the neurosciences.
Early in her career, she conducted behavioural research to study visual perception. One of her discoveries was that the short-term memory drops the second occurrence of a word in a sentence or a picture in a series of images.
Kanwisher was also one of the first to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to understand the functional organisation of the brain. Fellow researchers – even those who remain relatively sceptical about what fMRI scans really tell us – regard her work in this area as original, intelligent, meticulous, reproducible and cogent.
Her research is teaching us a great deal about the effects of such cognitive processes as attention and awareness. She has also localised areas of the brain that have highly specialised functions, for example perceiving places or images of the human body.
Her work has generated groundbreaking new insights into specialised brain regions and how they divide up tasks. Her discovery of the fusiform face area, a region that specialises in perceiving faces, was later confirmed in electrophysiological studies in non-human primates.
Much of Kanwisher’s work has found its way into cognitive neuroscience textbooks and it continues to influence the way researchers think about the functional organisation of the human brain. For example, it plays a role in a lively, longstanding scientific debate: is our brain mainly a holistic network, or does it consist of separate modules that perform highly local, specialised tasks?

Researcher
Nancy Kanwisher was born in Woods Hole (MA, USA) in 1958. After studying Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge (MA, USA), she was awarded a PhD in Cognitive Psychology by the same university in 1986.
In 1987, Kanwisher moved across Cambridge to join the faculty of Psychology at Harvard University. In 1988 she moved again, this time to the West Coast to take up positions at the University of California in Berkeley and Los Angeles. She returned to Cambridge in 1994. Since 2000, she has held positions at Massachusetts General Hospital, the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and MIT.
Kanwisher is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has received various honours and awards, including the US National Academy of Sciences’ Troland Research Award (1999), the Minerva Foundation’s Golden Brain Award (2007) and the National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award.

Video

Video interview with Nancy Kanwisher, laureate of the C.L. de Carvalho-Heineken Prize for Cognitive Science 2018

Introduction to the work of Nancy Kanwisher, laureate of the C.L. de Carvalho-Heineken Prize for Cognitive Science 2018

Jennifer Doudna

2022-08-18T16:49:41+02:00

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences has awarded the Dr H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics 2016 to Jennifer Doudna, Professor of Biomedical Sciences at the University of California in Berkeley (United States).

Pioneering research laying the foundations for revolutions in modern biochemistry 
Jennifer Doudna received the Dr H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics for her pioneering research into the structure and functioning of RNA molecules and RNA protein complexes.
From the beginning of her career, Jennifer Doudna knew that knowledge of the structure of RNA molecules was essential in order to understand their catalytic effect. She therefore started analysing crystal structures of RNA molecules right at the outset of her studies.
At first, these were relatively simple molecules. However, in the mid-1990s, she made a daring but successful attempt to crystallise and analyse a much larger RNA molecule: the Tetrahymena ribozyme P4-P6 domain. For the first time, researchers learnt how a long, complex RNA strand folds itself into functional bends so as to interact with surrounding molecules.
Doudna is still a leading researcher in the rapidly expanding research field dealing with the functioning of RNA molecules and RNA protein complexes. Her work created the foundations for exciting developments at the forefront of biochemistry: RNA interference and CRISPR, a bacterial system of defence against invading DNA that can now be used to edit the DNA code of living organisms with the greatest possible precision.

Researcher
Jennifer Doudna was born in 1964 in Hawaii (US). She studied at Pomona College in Claremont, California, but after gaining a bachelor degree in chemistry, she relocated to Harvard University in Cambridge (Massachusetts). Under the supervision of Jack Szostak (who was later to win both the Dr H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics (2008) and a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2009)), she was awarded a doctorate in 1989 for research into ribosomes, DNA-creating structures at the centre of a cell.
In that same year, Doudna continued her research at the University of Colorado (in Boulder) together with Thomas Cech, who later also won both the Dr H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics (1988) and a Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1989). In 1994, she was appointed assistant professor at Yale University. Three years later, she became an investigator at the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
In 2002, Doudna was appointed Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of California in Berkeley, where she still occupies a chair.
Jennifer Doudna is a member of the American National Academy of Sciences. She has been awarded many prizes, including the Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research in 2014, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences in 2015 and in 2016 the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award and the Canada Gairdner International Award.
In 2020, Jennifer Doudna has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Emmanuelle Charpentier.

Video

Jennifer Doudna, laureate of the Dr H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics 2016 

Introduction to the work of Jennifer Doudna, laureate of the Dr H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics 2016 

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