1997 Winners
Grand prize: Dr. 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.
Europe: Georg Halder
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.
North America: James Brownell
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.
Japan: Mitsuharu Hattori
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.
