For the 27th time, the Hamburg-based life sciences company Eppendorf SE is awarding its prestigious research prize this year. The independent jury chaired by Prof. Reinhard Jahn selected Dr. Thi Hoang Duong Nguyen, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK as the winner of the Eppendorf Award for Young European Investigators 2022. Thi Hoang Duong Nguyen, born in 1987, receives the 20,000 euro award for her pioneering work on the structure and function of two RNA-protein complexes that are essential for all higher organisms: Spliceosome and telomerase. „Her work provided fundamental insights into the structure and function of these complexes and will have a lasting impact on the understanding of RNA processing and genome stability”, the judges said.

Thi Hoang Duong Nguyen: „I feel humbled and honoured to receive the 2022 Eppendorf Award. I am very grateful to my laboratory, past and present colleagues, mentors, collaborators and family, without whom this would have not been possible. The award recognises our contribution to the elucidation of the molecular mechanisms of important processes through visualisation of the three-dimensional structures of the biological molecules involved. Our current research focuses on cellular pathways that maintain the essential chromosome caps to preserve genomic information. Failures in these pathways result in numerous human diseases. We hope that the insights gained from our work will facilitate therapeutic developments to treat these diseases.“ The award ceremony took place on July 5, 2022, at the Advanced Training Center of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany.

With the Eppendorf Award for Young European Investigators, which was established in 1995, Eppendorf SE honors outstanding work in biomedical research and supports young scientists in Europe up to the age of 35. The Eppendorf Award is presented in partnership with the scientific journal Nature. The Award winner is selected by an independent committee composed of Prof. Reinhard Jahn (Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Germany), Sadaf Farooqi (Wellcome-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science, Cambridge, UK), Madeline Lancaster (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK), Ben Lehner (Center for Genomic Regulation PRBB, Barcelona, Spain), Maria Leptin (Embo, Heidelberg, Germany) and Laura Machesky (Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute, Glasgow, UK).