At a ceremony yesterday in Paris, Wyss Core Faculty member Jim Collins, Ph.D., joined three other internationally renowned researchers who received the prestigious “Sanofi-Institut Pasteur Awards” for their innovative contributions to healthcare. Each researcher won a prize of 120,000 euros.
Sanofi, a global healthcare company, teamed up with the Institut Pasteur, a renowned biomedical research center, to create the Sanofi-Institut Pasteur Awards to recognize scientists for their contributions to the life sciences.
Collins, who helped to found the burgeoning field of Synthetic Biology, won the award for his innovative research in drug resistance. He was also recently elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies along with Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., founding director of the Wyss Institute.
“We are thrilled that Jim’s work continues to be recognized on a global scale,” Ingber said. “As the world’s healthcare needs continue to evolve, pioneers like Jim are leading the charge to develop innovative solutions, and to inspire younger generations as well.”
Collins leads the Anticipatory Medical & Cellular Devices Platform at the Wyss Institute, which builds devices at multiple scales designed to sense the breakdown of natural body rhythms, restore lost functions, and intervene automatically before life-threatening events occur. He is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and holds the William F. Warren Distinguished Professorship at Boston University, where he is also the co-director and co-founder of the Center for BioDynamics.
The jury for the four awards was composed of seven prestigious members:
- Pr. Peter C. Agre, John Hopkins University, Baltimore, Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2003
- Pr. Elizabeth H. Blackburn, University of California, San Francisco, Nobel Prize for Medicine 2009
- Pr. Pascale Cossart, Head of the Bacteria-Cell Interactions Unit, Institut Pasteur
- Pr. Alice Dautry, President of the Institut Pasteur
- Pr. Depei Liu, Vice President of the Academy of Engineering of China and President of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and the Peking Union Medical College
- Dr. Robert Sebbag, Vice President, Access to Medicines, Sanofi
- Dr. Elias Zerhouni, President, Global R&D, Sanofi
For more information, visit the Sanofi-Institut Pasteur website.