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CRISPR pioneers receive BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine

Francisco Martínez Mojica, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna receive prestigious international award.

A pile of newspapers

31 January 2017

Today, the BBVA Foundation announced this year’s winners in the Biomedicine category: Francisco Martínez Mojica, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna – for identifying and demonstrating the utility of CRISPR/Cas9 system as an easy-to-use genome editing tool.

Prof. Bruce Whitelaw, Interim Director of The Roslin Institute and a member of the prize jury for Biomedicine nominations said “Giving this high profile international prize to those central to the discovery of CRISPR as a genetic tool recognises the transformative power that this technology is likely to have on society. I am excited that The Roslin Institute is using this technology across a range of fundamental science projects in farm animals to advance livestock agriculture.”

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards seek to recognize and encourage world-class research and artistic creation, prizing contributions of broad impact for their originality and theoretical significance. The name of the scheme is intended to encapsulate both research work that successfully enlarges the scope of our current knowledge – pushing forward the frontiers of the known world – and the meeting and overlap of different disciplines.

Both Bruce Whitelaw and Francisco Martínez Mojica will be speaking at an event in Edinburgh on the 8th April organised by the Society of Spanish Researchers in the United Kingdom (more details will be available soon).

The 10th edition call for Frontiers of Knowledge Award nominations is open until the 30th June 2017:

http://www.fbbva.es/TLFU/tlfu/ing/microsites/premios/fronteras/nominacion/index.jsp