The European Science Awards - Promoting excellence

This year's European Research Awards were presented t 12th of March at a ceremony in Brussels by European Science and Research Commissioner Janez Potočnik. Awarded together for the first time, the three Prizes – the " Science Communication Prize", the "Marie Curie Excellence Awards", and the EUR 1.36 Million "Descartes Prize for Transnational Collaborative Research" – recognize outstanding scientific achievements by leading EU researchers, and shining examples of how to make science accessible and compelling to large audiences.

The three winner projects, that made europeans feel proud about their researchers' community,

were matters pertaining to a. listeria-avoidance , b. nanomachines , c. the understanding of climate-changing. Those three awarded researches aspire to make our daily round, safer, more comfortable and to clear the ground for the establishment of an earth-friendly development, for the future generations of humanity world-wide.

In particular:

VIRLIS project: This consortium of 8 EU research teams, led by Prof. Pascale Cossart from Institut Pasteur (France), developed new strategies to fight both old and new health threats through the detailed study of a major food pathogen, listeria. Offering innovative approaches to combating infection at a time when antibiotics have become less effective, the team's multidisciplinary work illustrates Europe's leadership in global research on infection biology.

SYNNANOMOTORS project. Harnessing the power of nanobiotechnology, this consortium of 6 transnational and multidisciplinary European research teams, led by Prof. David Leigh of Edinburgh University (UK), developed the first functional examples of synthetic motors on a molecular scale and many other potentially useful and innovative nanomachines.

EPICA project. This large-scale research project for ice coring in Antarctica, involves 12 leading EU polar research teams, coordinated by Prof. Hubertus Fischer from the Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven (Germany). EPICA has contributed radical breakthroughs in our understanding of climate change, by retrieving continuous ice cores which have extended the earth's historical climate record back 800.000 years.