Recent Laureates

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.

Examining the behaviour of molecules in living cells

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.

More information can be found here.

Researcher

Peter F.M. 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).

The effects of growth factors on blood vessels and nerve cells

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 cardio-vascular 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.

More information can be found here.

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.
McNeill 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.

Storyteller and investigator of unparalleled vision

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.

More information can be found here.

Researcher

Paul D.N. 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.

A catalogue for the library of life

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.

More information can be found here.

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.

A region of the brain specialising in facial recognition

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?

More information can be found here.

Joost Snijder

Joost Snijder is extremely knowledgeable about and skilled in the use of advanced microscopic techniques, including atomic force microscopy, cryo-electron microscopy, mass spectrometry and molecular modelling. This allowed him to explore macromolecular mechanisms such as virus assembly and the molecular ‘biological clock’ of cyanobacteria.
The jury praised him as an exceptionally talented, creative, independent researcher with great vision and courage. He has published many articles in prestigious journals.

Researcher

Snijder studied biomolecular sciences at Utrecht University. He received his PhD there in 2015 for his work using mass spectrometry to study the molecular mechanisms of viruses.
Today, he is an independent researcher and research consultant who advises on biochemistry and molecular biology. He works with Utrecht University and respected international partners such as the University of Washington in Seattle (USA), the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry and the Scripps Institute.

More information can be found here.

Maartje van der Woude

Maartje van der Woude’s work focuses on the law in a changing society. She studies how political and public debate on the one hand and the law on the other influence each other and explores how essentially separate policy domains such as migration and security become intertwined.
The jury praised her as an exceptional and inspiring research talent, a unique, passionate scientist who also seeks to connect with the public, for example in debates and a blog.

Researcher

Van der Woude studied criminal law and criminology at Leiden University and received her PhD there in 2010 for a dissertation on the drafting of Dutch counterterrorism legislation.
Today, she is professor of Law and Society at Leiden University. She is also affiliated with the Centre International de Criminologie Comparée at the University of Montreal (Canada) and the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo (Norway).

More information can be found here.

Peter Bijl

Peter Bijl developed a new, now widely used method to determine the age of sedimentary rocks in the Antarctic. Using these tools, he showed how greenhouse gases and ocean circulation patterns had major impacts on the development of the Antarctic ice sheet, global climates, sea levels, and life on land and in the sea.
The jury praised Bijl for his ability to work at the forefront of international Antarctic paleoclimate research while also communicating with the general public.

Researcher

Bijl studied earth sciences at Utrecht University and received his PhD there in 2011 for his study of the environmental and climatological evolution of the Antarctic Ocean in the Palaeogene Period (66 to 23 million years ago).
Today, he is an assistant professor in the Earth Science department at Utrecht University. He is also the director of the LPP Foundation, an advisory body that facilitates research in the fields of marine and terrestrial palynology, organic and inorganic geochemistry and limnology.

More information can be found here.

Marie-José van Tol

Marie-José van Tol’s work unravels the many factors that make people vulnerable to psychiatric disorders such as depression, anxiety, suicide, and schizophrenia. She combines knowledge and methods from clinical psychiatry, neuropsychology, cognitive psychology, neuroradiology, neuroscience and other fields.
The jury praised Van Tol as a talented, creative and passionate researcher who not only bridges many disciplines but otherwise knows how to build bridges as well: she co-founded and chairs the Young Academy Groningen.

Researcher

Van Tol studied clinical and medical psychology at Utrecht University. She received her PhD from Leiden University in 2011 for her MRI study of patients suffering depression or anxiety disorders.
Today, she is assistant professor and principal investigator in the Neuropsychology faculty, part of the Department of Neuroscience at University Medical Center Groningen.

More information can be found here.