Simon Elsässer awarded The Svedberg Prize 2023

The prize is awarded to a successful biochemist or molecular biologist who is active in Sweden and who has a doctoral degree not older than 12 years, counting from 1 January 2023. In addition to the medal, the award also includes a prize of SEK 35,000.

“It is a fantastic news for me and my group, I have to thank all former and current lab members for their hard work and great discoveries. A prize like this reminds us to cherish all the small steps that ultimately lead to new method and biological discoveries," says Simon Elsässer, Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics at Karolinska Institutet

Simon Elsässer’s research focuses on the plasticity of gene expression in pluripotent stem cells, for which he has applied a wide range of techniques ranging from structural biology and classical biochemistry to modern epigenomics and single cell methods.

New synthetic and chemical biology methods

"My laboratory develops new synthetic and chemical biology methods to perform ‘biochemistry in the living cell’.  The aim is to understand protein function in a mechanistic and quantitative manner, in the context of the living cell", explains Simon Elsässer.

Simon Elsässer holds a PhD from the David Rockefeller Graduate Program, Rockefeller University and joined Karolinska Institutet in 2015, as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics and Wallenberg Academy Fellow (2021).

The Svedberg Prize is awarded annually by the Swedish National Committee for Molecular Biosciences within the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (KVA) together with the Swedish Society for Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology (SFBBM).

The prize will be awarded in connection with the 26th Swedish Conference on Macromolecular Structure and Function (Sweprot) in June 2023.