Bayer announces first winners of 2009 Excellence in Science Award

Bayer has announced the first set of winners of its inaugural Excellence in Science Awards.

So far, three prizes have been allocated to outstanding individuals, who have each been presented with 10,000 euros (9,232 pounds).

In the materials category, Dr Jurgen Groll of the RWTH Aachen University was awarded a prize for his development of new of hydrogels based on biocompatible polymers.

Dr Tobias Ritter from the department of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University was presented with the award in the chemistry category for his detailed mechanistic investigations into fluorination reactions.

Finally, Dr Noriyuki Nishimura from the University of California won the biology accolade for his co-identification and characterisation of specific stress hormone receptors in plants.

The award allocations were decided upon by an independent scientific committee of the Bayer Science and Education Foundation

Earlier this month, Bayer confirmed that its novel positron emission tomography tracer florbetaben is to be adopted by biopharmaceutical company AC Immune SA to support a clinical trial in the field of Alzheimer’s disease.