Eva Novoa receives the Fisher Scientific Prize for her study published in Cell

The Spanish Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (SEBBM), chaired by the scientist Federico Mayor Menéndez, has awarded the XVI Fisher Scientific Prize for young researchers to Eva Novoa for her work in the gene Translation Lab at IRB Barcelona and that gave rise to the publication of an article in Cell in 2012. The prize brings with it 1,000€ and the opportunity to present her results at the annual SEBBM congress, which has been held in Madrid during this first week of September. Eva Novoa is currently working as a post-doctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston.

Directed by the head of the lab and ICREA professor Lluís Ribas de Pouplana, Novoa’s thesis contributed to explaining the differences between the three domains of life forms on Earth: Archae, Bacteria and Eukarya. Her work involved identifying several enzymes specific for Bacteria and Eukarya that conditioned the divergent evolution of these three domains.

The jury comprised 12 members, among them Federico Mayor Menéndez, director of the Centre de Biologia Molecular Severo Ochoa; Alicia Alonso Izquierdo, senior professor of the University of the Basque Country; Isabel Varela Nieto, CSIC research professor in Madrid; and Crisanto Gutiérrez Armenta, researcher at the Centre de Biologia Molecular Severo Ochoa.