First prize to Marcus Koch of the University of Dortmund
On Tuesday May 23, the DSM Awards for Chemistry and Technology were presented
for the twenty-first time. This year, the awards ceremony took place in the
German town of Velen. Marcus Koch of the University of Dortmund received first
prize from the chairman of the DSM Managing Board, Peter Elverding.
The prize consists of a certificate and an award of € 7,500.
The DSM Awards for Chemistry and Technology are awarded annually to young
researchers from the Netherlands, Belgium or the German Federal state of North
Rhine-Westphalia who have carried out doctoral research of high quality that
has prospects for industrial innovation. By sponsoring this award, DSM seeks
to draw attention to exceptional academic research and to reinforce the
company’s links to the academic world. From the large number of applications
that were received this year, nine candidates were preselected as finalists.
From these nine, an international jury chaired by Jos Put, who will become
Vice President Corporate Technology Management at DSM as of August 1, chose
the top three winners.
Second prize (€ 5,000) went to Sander Nabuurs of the Radboud University in
Nijmegen (Netherlands), while third prize (€ 2,500) was awarded to Joris Smit
of the University of Twente (Netherlands). The other nominees each received a
‘fourth prize’ of € 1,250.
The jury was extremely impressed by Koch’s out-of-the-box thinking and the way
he integrated the principles and techniques of bioinformatics and
cheminformatics to enable a new approach to drug design. Koch’s work will
enable the identification of new compounds with a particular biological
activity more effectively – an important factor in research on new medicines
for a wide variety of applications.
