Michèle Auger Award for Young Scientists’ Independent Research (2022)

In late 2018, the journal lost a much admired editorial board member, Prof. Michèle Auger, to illness (IUPAB 2019). To commemorate Michèle’s association with the journal, Biophysical Reviews started a competition with the twin aims of honoring her memory and promoting some of the values that were important to her (described in Hall 2019). Conducted on a yearly basis, the award winner receives the following.
(i) A year’s paid subscription to the journal (courtesy of Springer-Nature)
(ii) An invitation from the journal to publish a single author review article on an aspect of their research work, with this Review containing a printed foreword on the life and research of Prof. Michèle Auger
(iii) A personal plaque to keep in perpetuity along with their name and year of award printed on a memorial plaque kept by the principal officer of the journal
Each year, a call for nominations for ‘The Michèle Auger Award for Young Scientists’ Independent Research’ is put out in the editorial of issue 3, with an entry deadline set for October 31 (Hall 2020a). The requirement for nomination is that the young scientist be currently involved in biophysical research and be under 40 by the deadline of application. In 2020, the inaugural ‘Michèle Auger Award for Young Scientists’ Independent Research’ was conducted and this competition was won by Dr. Alexandra Zidovska, Assistant Professor at New York University (Hall 2020b; Zidovska 2020). For the 2021 award, the journal received 15 nominations.
Judging was carried out by a panel of sixteen judges. All judges were at the senior professor/head of school/head of institute level with twelve male and four female judges1.
Each nominee was assessed according to three categories, (i) originality, (ii) independence, and (iii) scientific excellence.
The winner of this year’s prize was Associate Professor Jorge Alegre-Cebollada. Jorge is a group leader at the National Institute of Cardiovascular Research (CNIC) in Madrid, Spain. More can be read about his research at his laboratory home page (https://www.cnic.es/en/investigacion/
molecular-mechanics-cardiovascular-system). Jorge will soon receive a plaque and complementary journal subscription and is scheduled to publish his awarded review article (carrying a foreword on the life and research of Prof. Michèle Auger) as the lead article of volume 13 issue 4 (published mid-August 2021).
Nominations for the 2022 prize can be made in the form of a candidate’s one page curriculum vitae, along with five original manuscripts, to be submitted by email to either the Chief Editor, or any one of the Biophysical Reviews’ Executive Editors, prior to 2021, October 31st. Judging will be carried out by a special committee assembled from the Biophysical Reviews’ Editorial Board, with this assembly taking place after the submission deadline. Results will be announced in December, with the winner’s single author Review to be published in the following year.
Submissions can be made via email in the form described above to any of the following.
Chief Editor
-Damien Hall – hall.damien@staff.kanazawa-u.ac.jp
Nano Life Science Institute (NanoLSI)
Kanazawa University,
Kakumamachi, Kanazawa, Ishikawa 920-1164. Japan.
Executive Editors
-S. Harding – steve.harding@nottingham.ac.uk
University of Nottingham
School of Biosciences
Sutton Bonington Leicestershire
LE12 5RD UK0115 9516148
-J.W.K. Ho – jwkho@hku.hk <jwkho@hku.hk>
School of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine
The University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong, China
–R. Itri – itri@if.usp.br <itri@if.usp.br>
Department of Applied Physics
Institute of Physics
University of Sao Paolo
Sao Paolo, Brazil
Executive Editors (continued)
-N. R. Jagannathan – jagan1954@hotmail.com
Chettinad Academy of Research & Education,
Kelambaklam, TN 603 103, India.

Nagayama – nagayama@nips.ac.jp

National Institute for Physiological Sciences
5-1 Higashiyama, Myodaiji, Okazaki, Japan
-W. Olson – wilma.olson@rutgers.edu
Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology
Rutgers – School of Arts and Sciences
10 Taylor Road
Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA
-G. Rivas – grivas@cib.csic.es
Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas
Margarita Salas – CSIC
Ramiro de Maeztu 9 – E28040 Madrid, Spain