Academic wins French science prize for ‘outstanding’ work in stem cell research
“This award reflects the essential contributions, insights, and support of my lab members past and present, as well as my many experimental collaborators”
A Fellow from St John’s has been awarded a prestigious prize worth €20,000 by the French Academy of Sciences for his pioneering research into stem cells and disease.
Professor Benjamin Simons has been presented with the 2023 Charles-Léopold Mayer Prize, which is given to researchers who have performed outstanding work in the biological sciences, and especially in the areas of cell or molecular biology.
Professor Simons, who holds a Royal Society Professorship at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, is a member of the Cavendish Laboratory, and is a Senior Group Leader at the Gurdon Institute – a research centre specialising in the study of developmental mechanisms and disease.
He said; “It is always encouraging to have your research recognised by peers, and especially from societies overseas. But it is especially true that, in my case, this award reflects the essential contributions, insights, and support of my lab members past and present, as well as my many experimental collaborators.”
Professor Simons’ research combines genetic approaches to trace the dynamics of cells and their progeny with mathematical and statistical modelling to address the mechanisms that control cell fate decision-making.
His studies have helped to uncover conserved patterns of stem cell fate during the development, maintenance and repair of epithelial tissues – which act as a protective barrier in and outside the body – and how these programmes become dysregulated during the early stages of tumour development.
The French Academy of Sciences, which is a learned society based at the Institute of France and founded in 1666, paid tribute to Professor Simons during the awards ceremony in Paris on 21 November.
Citizens or residents of any nation are eligible for the annual prize but it is never awarded to individuals of the same nation two years in a row. Previous Cambridge winners include Francis Crick (1961), Sydney Brenner (1975) and Sir John Gurdon (1984).
Published 29/11/2023