2001 Winners

Grand prize: Song-Hai Shi

Song-Hai Shi received the grand prize for his essay, "AMPA receptor dynamics and synaptic plasticity." Dr. Shi was born in 1973 in a small village near the east coast of China and grew up on a farm in the countryside. He attended Tsinghua University in Beijing, a step toward realizing his boyhood dream of becoming a scientist.

During his 5 years in the Department of Biological Science and Biotechnology, Dr. Shi not only learned the basics of mathematics, physics and chemistry, but was also introduced to experimental biological science. Most importantly, he learned how to frame a biological question and how to design experiments to test the hypothesis.

After graduating from Tsinghua in 1996, Dr. Shi moved to the United States to pursue graduate studies in a joint program on genetics between Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. In July 1997, he began his Ph.D. research in Dr. Roberto Malinow's laboratory at CSHL, investigating the mechanisms of long-term potentiation (LTP), the process by which brain neurons are thought to acquire and store information.

With expert guidance from Dr. Malinow, Dr. Shi used a combination of molecular biology, imaging, and electrophysiology to study the synaptic regulation of AMPA-Rs in hippocampal pyramidal neurons. His research was published in two first-author papers in Science and one in Cell; his 1999 Science paper was selected as a breakthrough of the year. After receiving his Ph.D. in December 2000, Dr. Shi continued his investigation into how our brains develop and function, by joining Dr. Yuh Nung Jan's laboratory to pursue postdoctoral work at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of California San Francisco.

Europe: Åsa Apelqvist

Åsa Apelqvist for her essay, "Analysis of Hh, Notch and Fgf Signaling During Pancreatic Development, Cell Differentiation and Function," based on her research in the laboratory of Professor Helena Edlund at UmeŒ University in UmeŒ, Sweden. Dr. Apelqvist was born in GŠllivare, Lappland, Sweden and studied at UmeŒ University where she received her bachelor's degree in 1995. She joined the Edlund group in 1994 and began her graduate studies on pancreas development. Dr. Apelqvist was awarded her Ph.D. in 2000 and currently has a postdoctoral position funded by the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT), in Professor Seung Kim's Laboratory at Stanford University in the United States of America.

Europe: Friedrich Frischknecht

Friedrich Frischknecht for his essay, "How Smallpox Spreads and What It Tells Us About Cell Motility," reporting research performed at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. Dr. Frischknecht was born in 1968 in Reutlingen, Germany. From 1990 to 1996 he studied Biochemistry at the Freie UniversitŠt Berlin (FUB). To fulfill the practical requirement for his diploma, he did research at the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. In 1996 he joined Michael Way's group at the EMBL as a predoctoral fellow and he obtained his Ph.D. from FUB in 2000. Dr Frischknecht is now a postdoctoral fellow with Robert Menard at the Institut Pasteur, Paris, France.

North America: Matthew L. Albert

Matthew L. Albert for his essay, "Resurrecting the Dead: Dendritic Cells Cross-Present Apoptotic Cells. A Pathway for the Activation of Tumor-specific Killer T Cells," based on work performed at the Rockefeller University. Dr Albert received his bachelor of science degree in chemistry from Brown University in 1992, his Ph.D. in immunology from The Rockefeller University in 1999, and his doctor of medicine degree from Cornell University Medical College in 2000.

Dr. Albert is currently a Clinical Scholar at The Rockefeller University, where he is performing basic immunology research in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Darnell and is helping to develop clinical trials to use dendritic cells that cross-present apoptotic cells as a tumor vaccine. He is also working as a pathology resident in Clinical Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at The New York Presbyterian Hospital.

When Dr. Albert is not in the laboratory, he can often be found on the hiking trail. In the past 5 years, he has hiked in Tanzania, Nepal, Australia, and Hawaii, and throughout the Adirondack Mountains. When he cannot stray that far from the bench, he rollerblades with his dog in Central Park, New York. His other interests include photography, reading fiction, and cooking.

Japan: Masaki Hiramoto

Masaki Hiramoto for his essay*, "The Second Function of Receptors in Patterning: Receptors that Present Ligands and the Chemotropic Hypothesis," reporting research carried out in the laboratory of Dr. Hotta at the University of Tokyo. Dr. Hiramoto grew up in Akita and Kanagawa and as a child became interested in biology. He moved to Tokyo to pursue his undergraduate and graduate studies. As a master's student in Biochemistry, he studied DNA replication. For his doctoral studies, he joined Dr. Hotta's group where he studied the mechanism of axon guidance. He focused on the protein Netrin, a secretory ligand that acts as a chemoattractant. They describe a capture/relocation mechanism where Netrin is not simply trapped by receptor binding, but can be relocalized to create positional information. Dr. Hiramoto is currently applying the capture/relocation mechanism to investigate how positional information is used in neural network formation. His work is funded by the Precursory Research for Embryonic Science and Technology program of the Japan Science and Technology Corporation.

All Other Countries: Itamar Simon

Itamar Simon for his essay "Time of Replication: Regulation and Significance," based on his doctoral research performed in the laboratory of Professor Howard Cedar in the Department of Cellular Biochemistry at Hebrew University Medical School. Dr. Simon was born in Israel in 1966 and pursued undergraduate studies, majoring in Biology and Chemistry, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem between 1989 and 1992. As a graduate student, he joined Professor Cedar's group and set out to study the role of the precise control of replication timing in animal cells. They found that differential time of replication is important for the global regulation of gene expression especially in genes, such as olfactory receptor genes and parentally imprinted genes, where differentiation between the two alleles is required. In addition, they learned that time of replication is controlled by cis-acting elements and it is not merely a consequence of transcription. Dr. Simon credits Professor Cedar with teaching him how to translate his innate curiosity into rigorous experimental design.

Dr. Simon is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Richard Young's laboratory at the Whitehead Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is working on the development of genomic tools to decipher genetic networks and is interested in using these tools to gain insight into the cell cycle regulatory network. Dr. Simon is married with four children.