Congratulations to the winners of the FMI Science Prizes 2021

Our three internal FMI Science Prizes were awarded last week during our Annual Meeting, which took place at the FMI this year. The Ed Fischer Prize, the Max Burger Prize and the Ruth Chiquet Prize recognize respectively the best thesis, the best postdoc study, and an innovative new method or tool. ED FISCHER PRIZE Lea Dümpelmann - a former PhD candidate in the Bühler lab and now an Innosuisse postdoc at Uni Bern in collaboration with the Inselspital Frauenklinik and Scailyte - was awarded the Ed Fischer Prize 2021, which recognizes the best thesis defended in the previous year. This prize is named after Nobel laureate Ed Fischer who was an inaugural member of the FMI Scientific Advisory Board; Ed passed away this year, aged 101. Lea studied how small RNAs can trigger transcriptional silencing of protein-coding genes in fission yeast. She discovered an epigenetic mechanism that allows yeast cells to transmit a silencing memory across generations. In other words, yeast can 'remember' that a specific gene had been repressed in their ancestors and repress it again under certain conditions.