FMI senior group leader Prisca Liberali received the 2024 International Suffrage Science Award for Life Sciences. The award recognizes the exceptional contributions of female scientists worldwide.
The Suffrage Science scheme honors women in the field of science not only for their significant scientific accomplishments but also for their capacity to inspire others. Its primary aim is to motivate more women to pursue scientific disciplines and remain engaged in these fields.
Prisca Liberali is a winner of the International Suffrage Science Award for Life Sciences in 2024. In recognition of her achievements, Liberali received a unique Suffrage Science jewelry piece. The award ceremony took place on March 7 virtually and at Oxford University, United Kingdom.
Conceived by British cell biologist Amanda Fisher and British science journalist Vivienne Parry in 2011, the Suffrage Science scheme was supported by the UK’s Medical Research Council to mark the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. Since then, the Suffrage Science awards have been conferred to 160 individuals, creating a network of inspiring women across the globe.
The awards are unique heirloom jewelry pieces crafted by students from the art and design college of the University of London, who worked with scientists to design pieces inspired by research and the Suffragette movement - from which the initiative derives its name.
A distinctive feature of this initiative is that each recipient nominates the person they wish to pass on their award. Liberali, who was nominated by Swiss-Dutch cell biologist Françoise Gisou van der Goot, expressed the profound significance of this recognition.
About Prisca Liberali
Prisca Liberali studied chemistry at the Sapienza University of Rome and completed a PhD in physical chemistry at the Mario Negri Sud Foundation in Chieti, Italy. She conducted postdoctoral research at ETH Zurich. In 2015, she was made an assistant professor at the University of Basel and appointed a group leader at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research. Liberali has made important contributions in many fields - from fundamental chemistry to in vivo tissue regeneration. She is fascinated by the role of self-organization in collective cell behaviors. Her research group develops experimental, quantitative, and statistical methods for decoding the principles of tissue organization. In 2020, she received the Friedrich Miescher Prize and in 2022 she was awarded the Gold Medal of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) as well as the EMBO Membership.
’ Liberali group webpage on www.fmi.ch
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