MTC Awards 2018
MTC awards were presented to the following recipients from the Head of Department Susanne Nylén this December.
Senior Scientist of the year: Lisa Westerberg
The Senior Scientist of the Year 2018 is a very good MTC representative and an ambassador for the department, and serves as a role model for all of us. Other essential qualities include having a positive aura, a sense of responsibility, and an enormous productive capacity and endurance. The chosen researcher has also excelled at research grant applications, which include a six year position from the Childhood Cancer Foundation and extended grants from the Swedish Cancer Society. The hard work and dedication she puts into her research has led to positive results and during the past two years the productivity and output from the group has been impressive, with publications in prominent journals such as The Journal of Clinical Investigations. Scientist of the year 2018 is awarded to Lisa Westerberg.
Pedagogical Prize of the year: Åsa Sjöling
Teaching students and training new generations of professionals and scientists is at the core of a university. At MTC, undergraduate education is a small but vital part of the department and we want to show our appreciation for those who teach.
The awardee for 2018 has been a candidate for this prize for a few years now, and is a well regarded and highly appreciated teacher. In student evaluations the comments about this teacher have included: “A pedagogical role model, with a contagious enthusiasm for the subject” and “a fantastic lecturer who really lifted the course”. The pedagogical prize for 2018 is awarded to Åsa Sjöling for her great work in teaching our future doctors and biomedicine students in microbiology.
MTC’er of the year: Åsa Belin
The 2018 MTCer of the year is a meticulous, dedicated and engaging colleague. The awardee always makes time for the most mundane of questions and for the most personal of issues, while employing a multitude of forms, rules and regulations which are strictly adhered to! Always with a friendly smile, she has been the insurance policy for our PhD students. I'm very pleased to name Åsa Belin as the MTCer of the year.
Junior Scientists of the year: Michael Landreh
This year’s Young Scientist of the Year award is given to Michael Landreh for establishing himself as an expert mass spectometry scientist and a productive research leader, with two senior author papers published during 2018. Michael is an important link between MTC and SciLifeLab and, with his broad scientific knowledge and contagious energy, he is an excellent role model for other young scientists
Lars Engstrand (right) receives his Apecial Outreach Award from MTC Head of Department Susanne Nylén
Special Outreach Award: Lars Engstrand
The MTC outreach award is awarded for many years of research on a topic that has gained increasing interest from society in general, and motivated a wide range of new research topics. The outreach award 2018 goes to Lars Engstrand for his decades of interaction with national and international scientists, the general public, hospitals and clinicians, as well as national (sequencing) core facilities, and for recently establishing a large scale collaboration with a pharmaceutical company (Ferring).
Paper of the Year: Karthik Subramanian (Nature Microbiology)
Major publications today require an enormous effort, lots of hard work and, often, the ability to collaborate and find partners. An example of this is the paper chosen as paper of the year 2018. The paper concerns pneumococcal infections and new methods to tackle these infections. Integrated studies in mouse models and human cells led to the discovery of how the bacterial toxin pneumonolysin interacts with the mannose receptor C type 1 on macrophages and dendritic cells. Binding to the MRC1 receptor mediates internalization of the bacteria, in a manner that down-regulates host immune responses facilitating bacterial survival. The paper of the year 2018 is awarded to Karthink Subramanian in Birgitta Henriques-Normark’s group for the publication: “Pneumolysin binds to the Mannose-Receptor C type 1 (MRC-1) leading to anti-inflammatory responses and enhanced pneumococcal survival”. Published in Nature Microbiology in November 2018.