by Jerusalem (AP) – An American biochemist whose research helped scientists to treat Coronavirus and HIV has won this year’s Wolf Prize, a respected Israeli award in the arts and sciences.
Pamela Björkman from the California Institute of Technology won the award for “offering new hope in the fight against infectious diseases”, the Wolf Fund, which awards the prize, said on Monday.
Björkman’s research “has illegal the secrets of identifying the immune system and identified pathogens and developed play -amended approaches to combat some of the most impressive viral enemies of humanity,” said the fund.
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Eight others also received the state -financed price, which has been awarded annually for 47 years. Many of the winners have received Nobel Prices.
Björkman grew up in Oregon and studied at the University of Oregon, Harvard and Stanford before moving to Caltech in 1989. Your research focuses on how the immune system identifies urgent pathogens. It broke the ground, said the fund, as scientists understand T-Zell recognition and immunization strategies for HIV. T cells are white blood cells that help to ward off diseases.
Since Covid 19 pandemic, it has worked on the development of a new strategy to design immunogenic ones that trigger certain antibodies against corona viruses.
“Pamela Björkman’s work gives an insight into a new rational design strategy for future vaccines to cope with the greatest immunization challenges of humanity,” wrote the fund.
This year’s architecture award was awarded to the Chinese architect Tantian XU in rural work. The price committee said: “Economic villages throughout China economically, socially and culturally”.
XU studied architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design before returning to China, started her own company and worked on a number of public projects that started village management, the fund says. This includes a bridge that connects two villages separated by a flood, factories for tofu and brown sugar and renovating quarries.
It praised her pioneering approach to rural development – one that differs with the comprehensive, uniform strategies in contrast to China’s urban expansion “.
Other recipients of this year’s award are Jeffery Dangl from the University of North Carolina, Jonathan Jones from Sainsbury Laboratory in England and Brian Stakawicz from the University of California, Berkeley for Agriculture.
Professors Jainendra Jain from Pennsylvania State University, Moty Heiblum from Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, James Eisenstein from Caltech in Physics and Helmut Schwarz, will also receive the award winner.
Former Laureate include astrophysicists Stephen Hawking, the artist Marc Chagall, the conductor Zubin Mehta and the musician Stevie Wonder.
