Alissa, who has joined our group in January 2024, has received the Walter Kalkhof-Rose Memorial Prize 2024 from the Academy of Sciences and Literature | Mainz (Germany) during their annual celebration. This Prize is awarded every two years to an outstanding young scientist in the natural sciences who, at an early stage of their academic career, has already made pioneering research contributions, has developed an independent academic profile and is now about to complete their habilitation or has an equivalent qualification.
She has been awarded in recognition of her excellent research in the field of aptamers, which she performed during her doctoral studies, supervised by Markus Fischer, Udo Schumacher, and Zoya Ignatova at the University of Hamburg in Germany. In particular, she developed a novel high-throughput aptamer selection platform using a modified Illumina MiSeq to perform binding assays subsequent to sequencing. With this method, Alissa significantly increased the efficacy of aptamer selection and successfully selected DNA aptamers for multiple proteins of medical interest.
Commenting on the award, Alissa said: “I am deeply honoured to have received this prize despite having just been awarded my doctorate and feel even luckier to have gotten it in the year of the 75th anniversary of the Academy of Sciences and Literature | Mainz. This award recognises not only the countless hours invested in this project, but also the incredible support I have received along the way and motives me to continue solving biochemical challenges with novel technologies.”
Alissa is pictured with Prof. Dr.-Ing. Reiner Anderl, the President of the Academy of Sciences and Literature, during the 75th anniversary celebration in Mainz. Thanks go to Astrid Garth/AWD for the photograph.
