Prof. Laura Lechuga of the BIST centre ICN2 and Prof. Miguel Beato of BIST centre CRG have both been awarded the prestigious Rei Jaume I Award this week.
The prestigious Rei Jaume I Award, sponsored by the Valencian Government (Generalitat Valenciana), is awarded every year to experts who have significantly contributed to the advancement of their research fields. It recognises the accomplishments in six categories with a golden medal and a 100,000 euro prize to be used mainly for research and innovation activities.
This year, two BIST researchers received the prestigious award:
Prof. Laura M. Lechuga, Full Professor of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Head of the Nanobiosensors and Bioanalytical Applications Group at the ICN2 (a BIST centre) and a member of the Networking Biomedical Research Centre (CIBER-BBN), has received the New Technologies Award for her career in the field of nanobiosensors. Prof. Laura M. Lechuga received her PhD in Chemistry from the University Complutense of Madrid (Spain) in 1992. The principal focus of her research is the development of novel nanobiosensor devices based on nanoplasmonics and silicon-based photonics principles, including surface biofunctionalisation, microfluidics for automatic fluid delivery, and complete lab-on-a-chip integration for point-of-care devices. The use of nanobiosensor devices for a wide range of challenging clinical and environmental applications is one of her main objectives.
Prof. Miguel Beato, Founder of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG, a BIST centre) and Director of the research institute from 2000 to 2011, was awarded the Rei Jaume I Prize for Medical Research for his pioneering work for the discovery of certain proteins that act as receptors for steroid hormones, including the glucocorticoid receptor. He characterised the progesterone receptor and found that steroid receptors bind to specific portions of DNA sequences. He also uncovered how chromatin remodelling complexes modulate the structure of nucleosomes and gene transcription, shedding new light on gene expression.
The other awardees of this year’s edition are: Francisco José García Vidal in Basic Research, Diego Puga Pequeño in Economy, Fernando Maestre Gil in Environment Protection, and Verónica Pascual Boé, in the Entrepreneur category.
More information:
CRG news piece
ICN2 news piece
