The chemist Ernest Giralt receives the main award of the European Peptide Society

This Sunday, the European Peptide Society (EPS) is to distinguish the IRB Barcelona chemist Ernest Giralt through the presentation of the Josef Rudinger Memorial Lecture Award, the main prize given by this organisation to specialists in field of peptide chemistry. Prof. Giralt is acknowledged for “his important contributions” to the development of methodologies for peptide (small proteins) synthesis, structural studies, and molecular recognition, and to the use of peptides as drug delivery agents. The Rudinger Memorial Award will be presented at the Opening Ceremony of the 33rd European Peptide Symposium, Sofia, Bulgaria.

This is the 15th Josef Rudinger Memorial Lecture Award, a distinction first presented in 1986. Among previous awardees is the scientist Bruce Merrifield, Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the invention of solid-phase peptide synthesis.

Ernest Giralt is Full Professor at the University of Barcelona. He undertakes his research at IRB Barcelona, where he leads the Design, synthesis and structure of peptides and proteins group and coordinates the Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology Programme, one of the five programmes at the institute.

Prof. Giralt has published around 350 papers, 16 patents, numerous review articles, and several books that have become references in his field. In 2008, he was accepted into the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona.

During his career he has received various prizes: Leonidas Zervas Award (1994), Dimitrios Theodoropoulos Memorial Lecture Award (2010), Novartis Chemistry Lectureship Award (2011), and the Premio Nacional de Investigación (2011), the highest scientific award in Spain.