Paolo Capelli receiving his prize from group leader Georg Keller. Below: Alex Tuck receiving his prize (and the beloved ’FMI Wickelfish’ to swim down the Rhine!) from group leader Helge Grosshans. Luke Isbel, Alicia Michael and Ralf Grand were awarded by group leader Susan Gasser.
A highlight at the FMI Annual Meeting 2019, which has taken place last week in the Swiss Alps (Grindelwald), was the Award Ceremony: the winners of the Ed Fischer Prize for best thesis, the Max Burger Prize for an outstanding postdoctoral publication, and the Chiquet Originality Prize were called on stage to receive their award and give a short presentation about their project. ED FISHER PRIZE Paolo Capelli (Arber group) was awarded the Ed Fisher 2019, which recognizes the best thesis defended in the previous year. This prize is named after Nobel laureate Ed Fisher who was an inaugural member of the FMI Scientific Advisory Board. Movement is the main output of the nervous system, but how the brain communicates plans for diverse body actions to the spinal cord for execution is poorly understood. Paolo took an innovative tracing approach to identify the neurons that act as direct communication lines for different forms of movement from the brainstem to the spinal cord. He identified an anatomical logic in the organization of these channels for the control of foreand hindlimbs, and made use of these findings in the main work of his PhD thesis. He was interested to understand how locomotion - an essential form of movement engaging the full body - is regulated by brainstem command centers.
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