To acknowledge and recognise outstanding young medicinal chemists and chemical biologists (≤ 12 years after PhD) working in European industry and academia, EFMC established the "EFMC Prize for a Young Medicinal Chemist or Chemical Biologist in Industry" and the "EFMC Prize for a Young Medicinal Chemist or Chemical Biologist in Academia".
The two prizes are given annually and consist of:
For the 2023 edition, the prize-winners are invited to give an oral communications at the IX EFMC International Symposium on Advances in Synthetic and Medicinal Chemistry (EFMC-ASMC 2023), scheduled to take place in Zagreb, Croatia on September 3-7, 2023. Two additional nominees are also identified and acknowledged as most meritorious runners-up.
The selection committee designated Dr Georg Winter (Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria) as the winner of the 2023 EFMC Prize for a Young Medicinal Chemist or Chemical Biologist in Academia.
Georg Winter is a CeMM Principal Investigator who specializes in chemical biology and cancer research. His lab's focus is on developing pharmacologic strategies to understand and disrupt aberrant transcriptional circuits in cancer using high-throughput and unbiased technologies. Georg has authored more than 40 manuscripts and received multiple awards for his contributions to the field of targeted protein degradation. His group is currently exploring the concept of proximity-inducing small molecules to rewire cellular circuits.
Dr Marco Di Antonio (Imperial College London, United Kingdom) and Dr Valle Palomo (IMDEA Nanociencia, Spain) have been recognised as the most meritorious runners-up.
The selection committee designated Dr Teresa De Haro Garcia (UCB, Belgium) as the winner of the 2023 EFMC Prize for a Young Medicinal Chemist or Chemical Biologist in Industry.
Teresa de Haro obtained her master’s degree in Chemistry at the Autónoma University in 2007. In 2012 she received her PhD from the University of Zurich with Prof. Cristina Nevado thereafter joining the group of Prof. Alois Fürstner at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung (Germany) as a post-doctoral associate. In 2013 she moved to UK to work at Eli Lilly (Windlesham) before joining UCB Slough in 2014. Since 2018, Teresa works as principal scientist at UCB Braine (Belgium).
Dr Jean Baptise Langlois (Novartis, Switzerland) and Dr Afjal Miah (GlaxoSmithKline, United Kingdom) have been recognised as the most meritorious runners-up.
EFMC Prize for a Young Medicinal Chemist or Chemical Biologist in Industry
EFMC Prize for a Young Medicinal Chemist or Chemical Biologist in Academia