Nobel prizes 2020

Winning the Nobel Prize still counts as immeasurable recognition for the winner and his or her team. Ask the recent Dutch Nobel Prize winner in chemistry Ben Feringa and the stories keep coming; there is a life before and a life after winning the coveted, prestigious prize.

What makes this year’s research stand out and what is its significance for science and society? In a talkshow format with the following top-notch TU/e experts, we will discuss the ins and outs of this year’s groundbreaking work.

Willem Mulder is professor of Precision Medicine at the department of Biomedical Engineering at TU/e. He is also professor of Radiology and Oncological Sciences at Mount Sinai’s Translational and Molecular Imaging Institute (TMII, Icahn School of Medicine, New York, USA). His research focuses on precision imaging and targeted therapy in cardiovascular disease, cancer and transplantation. he will elaborate on the research of this year’s winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice, for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus.

Joep Huiskamp is advisor and program manager for the Executive Board of the TU/e. He will reflect on the work of American poet Louise Glück, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature this year for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.

Tom de Greef is associate professor of Synthetic Biology at the department of Biomedical Engineering at TU/e and professor of Biophysical Chemistry at Radboud University. He works on the development of novel biological computing devices that can enhance signal-processing capabilities of natural and synthetic cells. He will bring you up to speed on the scientists and science behind the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which was awarded this year to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for the development of a method for genome editing. Since Charpentier and Doudna discovered the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors in 2012 their use has exploded.

Tim de Zeeuw is professor of Theoretical Astronomy at Leiden University and was the Director General of ESO from 2007 – 2017. His research concentrates on the formation, structure and dynamics of galaxies, including our own, the Milky Way. He will explain all about the work of the researchers that were awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics: Roger Penrose for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity, and Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy.

"Nobel Prizes 2020" is a collaboration between the Institute for Complex Molecular Systems and Studium Generale.

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More information about SG & USE can be found here.