2009 Marcel Benoist Prize for SystemsX.ch Principal Investigator

The Marcel Benoist Foundation awarded the 2009 Marcel Benoist Prize, a sum of 100,000 Swiss francs, to Professor Françoise Gisou van der Goot, member of the Global Health Institute at the EPFL. The laureate has been recognized for her work in infectious diseases, notably in how bacterial toxins make their way through a cell and how the cell reacts to these toxins. Considered the “Swiss Nobel Prize,” the Marcel Benoist Prize has recognized scientists established in Switzerland for their important work and its impact on human life since 1920. Françoise Gisou Van der Goot is the first woman ever awarded this distinction.

Dutch by birth and born in Teheran in 1964, Dr. Gisou van der Goot received her Ph.D. in 1990 from the University of Paris VI. In 1993, she joined the University of Geneva, where, in 2001, she was named associate professor. In 2006, she accepted her current position as professor in microbiology at the Global Health Institute of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne. Her work has already been recognized by several committees, most notably by the Leenards Prize in 2009.

Gisou van der Goot is the Principal Investigator of the SystemsX.ch RTD project LipidX.

At yesterday's ceremony she received the award from the new Federal Councillor Didier Burkhalter.