The 2018 winner is.....Alban Lonchamp!
We are happy to announce our this year´s winner of the Werner Risau Prize: Dr. Alban Lonchamp, who is currently working as Resident in General Surgery in the Hopital du Valais in Sion, Switzerland. The work related to the project now considered for the Werner Risau Prize was mainly done in the labs of James D. Mitchell and Keith Okazaki at the Harvard University / Brigham and Women´s Hospital in Boston. In the abstract to this study it says"…Here, we report a nutrient-based pathway triggered by dietary restriction of sulfur amino acids, regulating angiogenesis independent of hypoxia or HIF1alpha in mice…" And further: …"Nutrio"-angiogenesis required the amino acid - sensing eIF2alpha kinase GCN2 and the transcription factor ATF4 in ECs. Increased ATF4 promoted expression of VEGF and the hydrogen sulfide (H2S) produced cystathionine-gamma-lyase (CGL). H2S triggered a metabolic switch to glycolysis via inhibition of mitochondrial respiration, thus facilitating rapid ATP production necessary for EC migration…" The discovery of this novel nutrient sensing pathway that appears even targetable by an appropriate diet independent of the hitherto known signaling pathways certainly deserves the acknowledgement given by the Werner Risau Prize. Congratulations!
Application Deadline extended!
20 years of the Werner Risau Prize
In the past we had really fantastic prize awardees - and now it is up to you to join this illustrious group of young scientists who all performed fascinating research on endothelial cell biology! So if you have an interesting story to tell, either just published or in press, and you are prepared to present it to an international audience of dedicated cell biologists - get your act together and apply! All the more since this year we will be commemorating the 20th anniversary of Werner Risau´s unfortunate death…
The 2017 Awardee - Kerstin Wilhelm!
As usual the prize will be awarded during the Spring Meeting of the German Society for Cell Biology, this year on March 1st, in Leipzig. Hope to see you all there!
The race is open again
But remember: The application deadline is January 30, 2017! So do your paperwork and send it in ASAP!
No Winner for 2016!
Unfortunately, we could not find a person this year that would have qualified in our opinion as a laureate for the Werner-Risau-Prize . We are still looking into the potential reasons as to why this happened: Fewer people that actually knew Werner Risau personally and bear him in remembrance, low overall visibility of the prize, unpleasant format of the prize ceremony, not enough prestige (or money?) that is associated with the prize - all these points, if true or not, could have contributed to the fact that we had an extremely low number of applicants this year, although we had extended the deadline again for the application considerably. Nevertheless, instead of giving the prize to someone less outstanding, we decided against this option and convinced ourselves that we should do our best and spread the word about the Prize among our colleagues and collaborators and all the scientist that we will meet in seminars and conferences, with much more energy and vigor and enthusiasm as before during the next couple of months!
Application proposal 2016
Please see the corresponding announcement in the download section!
The 2015 winner is there - Ayel Ben-Zvi!
He and his colleagues could also demonstrate that this differentiation process was independent from vessel neoformation or angiogenesis in the CNS and also independent from vascular patterning (the latter being the process of how vessel invade the CNS tissue and how the form branches there). Dr. Ben-Zvi currently is a Principle Investigator at the Department of Developmental Biology and Cancer Research at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Congratulations!!Tomorrow he will give a presentation on this topic at the DGZ Annual Meeting in Cologne!
Application for the 2015 Werner Risau Prize
The prize will again be handed over during the Annual Meeting of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Zellbiologie (DGZ). This time it will be held in their Cologne, Germany from March 24 - 27, 2015. Please, dare to apply, if you have an appealing study just published or in press, and which you are prepared to present to an international audience of dedicated cell biologists- it`s definitely worth it! If you don´t believe it - just try to google where some of the previous Werner Risau Prize winners are now advancing their career....
But remember: The application deadline is January 15, 2015! So do your paperwork and send it in ASAP!
Dr. Anjali "Bones" Kusumbe - the 2014 winner
We are happy to announce our this year´s winner of the Werner Risau Prize: Dr. Aljali Kusumbe from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine at Münster, Germany. As in previous years we again had received really outstanding applications, of which Dr. Kusumbe´s study published in Nature made it to the top of the list. Why "Bones"? She discovered a specific blood vessel subtype in bone termed "type H", which is important for developmental and regenerative angiogenesis. These vessels seemed to be intrinsically linked to bone mass as loss of these vessels, which gradually occurs with age also leads to loss of bone bone mass. Reactivation of type H vessels in contrast increased osteoprogenitor cells numbers which are in close contact with the endothelial cells of type H vessels, and also improve bone mass.
Application Deadline now January 31, 2014!
Due to logistical problems, we again decided to extend the application deadline until January 31, 2012. We are sorry for any inconveniences that this might have caused and hope to get all potential applicants, which may have been discouraged by not being able to send their application in time, to submit their paperwork NOW! Good luck!
Inernational Meeting of the DGZ 2014 in Regensburg
The dates for next International Meeting of the German Society for Cell Biology and the Society for Developmental Biology are out: Reserve a few days from March 18 - 21, 2014 and get blown away again by a variety of fascinating topics in cell and developmental biology during the next meeting, which will be organized in Regensburg, Bavaria. Deadlines for abstract submissions and the program will be available soon at http://www.zellbiologie.de/de_tagungen.phtml. As soon as the Meeting poster will be made available, we will also provide a link to download it from this site.
The 2013 winner - Rui Benedito
Annual Meeting of the DGZ 2013 in Heidelberg
Here is a link to the 2013 International Joint Meeting of the German Society for Cell Biology and the Society for Developmental Biology in Heidelberg. It will be staged between March 20 - 23 and again cover a variety of fascinating topics related to current problems in cell and developmental biology. Abstract submission deadline for the meeting is January 31, 2013. But remember: The last chance to throw in YOUR contribution to the Werner Risau Prize will be on January 15, 2013. If you want to get the announcement poster for the DGZ meeting (i.e. to spread the word about this wonderful meeting in your institution) you can find the PDF on the download page.
Photos from the 2012 award
Have a look at the photos from the 2012 award ceremony on the Photos page!
The next Annual Meeting of the German Society for Cell Biology 2013
The competition is open again for the next WRP, which will be awarded as usual during the next 36th Annual Meeting of the German Society for Cell Biology! The exact date and the location for 2013 have not been announced yet for this event but we will keep you posted. My guess is that it will take place again in March or April! As soon as this information will be released, you will also find it here on this website. So wrap up your stories and enter the combat zome! Apply for the Werner Risau Prize NOW! Admittedly, the deadline is still far away (January 15, 2013) but remember: Publishing may not be as straightforward as you might have assumed intially - and it can be a quite lenghty and cumbersome process!
And the winner is....
We are happy to announce our this year´s winner of the Werner Risau Prize: Dr. Jorge Ivan Alvarez from the Neuroimmunology Unit at the Centre Hospitalier De L'Université de Montréal, Canada. Although we again had received quite a number of really outstanding applications of high quality, Jorge Alvarez´ study on the role of hedgehog signaling on the integrity of the blood brain barrier and its implications on immune quiescence in the CNS was so convincing that the prize committee hardly did not have any alternative but select him as the new awardee. He will be presenting in the late afternoon on March 21 during the 35th Annual Meeting of the German Society for Cell Biology (March 21-25, 2012). Hope to see you all there!
Application Deadline extended!
Due to problems with the E-Mail address of Prof. Hallmann that was provided on The Prize - webpage, we decided to extend the application deadline until January 25th, 2012. We are sorry for any inconveniences that this might have caused and hope to get all potential applicants, which might have been discouraged by not being able to send their application, to submit their paperwork NOW! Good luck!
Application for the 2012 Werner Risau Prize
But remember: The application deadline is January 15, 2012! So do your paperwork and send it in ASAP!
Our 2011 awardee: Suphansa Sawamiphak
The 2011 Werner Risau Prize
Boris Strilic v2.0
And just as a side remark: Receiving the Werner-Risau-Prize usually does not harm your career - Boris Strilic is now a group leader in the department of Prof. Stefan Offermanns at the MaxPlanck Institute for Heart and Lung Research in Bad Nauheim, Germany.
Boris Strilic: Our 2010 laureate!
The 2010 Werner Risau Prize
Our 2009 laureate: Tuomas Tammela
Re: DGZ Meeting in Konstanz
Prize Money Doubled
€ 4000.
The new Werner-Riisau-Prize will be awarded for the first time during the next meeting of the Swiss and German Societies for Cell Biology on March 25, 2009 in Konstanz, Germany. The increased prize money will certainly help to promote the popularity of the Werner-Risau-Prize and further raise its visibility and significance within the scientific community and especially amongst vascular biologists.
1st Joint Congress of the Swiss and the German Societies of Cell Biology
Carl Zeiss Lecture: Rudolf Jaenisch (Cambridge, USA)
Symposia
A: Dynamics of the cytoskeleton (Jürgen Wehland, Braunschweig)
B: Physiology of cellular growth control (Christian Frei, Zürich)
C: Vesicle trafficking (Suzanne Pfeffer, Stanford, CA)
D: Cellular microbiology (Pascal Cossart, Paris)
E: Regulation of cellular processes by microRNAs (Ueli Schibler, Genf)
F: Systems biology of phosphatidyl-inositol-phosphate signaling (Tobias Meyer, Stanford, CA)
Minisymposia
1: Ubiquitination and the proteasome (Marcus Groettrup, Konstanz & Ivan Dikic, Frankfurt)
2: Nuclear architecture (Francois Karch, Genf)
3: Stem cells (Karlheinz Krause, Genf, & Marcel Leist, Konstanz)
4: Cellular aging (Alexander Bürkle, Konstanz, & Thomas von Zglinicki, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK)
5: Chemical approaches in Cell Biology (Thomas U. Mayer, Konstanz)
6: Tissue remodelling (Wieland Huttner, Dresden)
7: Cell polarity (Kai Simons, Dresden)
8: Regulation of the cell cycle (Ingrid Hoffmann, Heidelberg & Erich Nigg, Martinsried)
9: The cellular basis of innate immunity (Bruno Lemaître, Lausanne)
10: Label-free microscopic methods (Andreas Zumbusch, Konstanz)
More detailed information to the program, registration, abstract submission etc. is again available at the zellbiologie website
www.zellbiologie2009.de
The race is on for the 2009 prize!
Jonathan Leslie is the WRP winner of 2008!
His work was published in the December issue of Development (Development 2007,134: 839-844) and was critically acclaimed shortly afterwards in Nature (Gridley, T (2007). Nature 445 (7129): 722-723) and in two NatureReviews Research Highlights (Mullard, A (2007). Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 8: 182-183 and Mullard, A (2007). NatureReviews Genetics 8: 172).
Deadline for 2008 DGZ Meeting is close!
Next: The 2008 DGZ Meeting in Marburg
Hope to see you all there!
Karina Yaniv: Our 2007 laureate!
Coming up: The 2007 DGZ-Meeting
For more information and registration, please see: http:// www.zellbiologie2007.de
There will be plenty of excellent talks and you will have the opportunity to meet with old and new colleagues in your area of research. And of course, if you particiate you also will have a chance to attend the ceremony on Wednesday afternoon, March 14, in which the Werner-Risau-Prize will be awarded. We again received a number of outstanding applications and it won´t be an easy task to single out a particular one.
Main topics of the 2007 DGZ meeting:
☞Cellular/Molecular Bases of Ageing (S1)
☞Quality Control of Macromolecules (S2)
☞Long Range Transport Systems (S3)
☞Cellular Mechanics (S4)
☞Molelcular Basis of Chronobiology (S5)
☞Tubular Morphogenesis (S6)
☞MicroRNA (MS1)
☞Structural Dynamics of Organelles (MS2)
☞Gases as Signalling Molecules (MS3)
☞Molecular and Functional Organization of the Postsynaptic Scaffold at Central Nervous Synapses (MS4)
☞Cellular Control of Metal Homeostasis (MS5)
☞3-D Methods in Cell Biology (MS6)
☞Cell Volume Regulation (MS7)
☞Host-parasite Interactions (MS8)
☞"Sweet Biology": The Sugar Code in Cell Biology (MS9)
☞Cytomechanics in Development (MS10)
☞Others (O)
The "Werner-Risau-Prize.org" website
In the near future we may also present exciting recent articles related to vascular biology on this page and may even transform it into a vascular biology blog if it turns out that there is demand for it. Just drop by regularly!