Prizes and awards
This is my archive
Bence György receives the 2026 Alfred Vogt Prize for his pioneering research in retinal base editing
The prize recognizes Bence György’s work on high-efficiency base editing in the retina, published in Nature Medicine. The study advances a promising therapeutic approach for Stargardt disease, an inherited form of retinal degeneration that can lead to severe central vision loss. Using base editing, the team demonstrated a highly efficient…
Katherine A. High honored with 2026 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences
Katherine A. High, Jean Bennett and Albert Maguire share the 2026 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. The prize recognizes their work leading to the first gene therapy product to receive regulatory market authorization from the U.S. FDA, a milestone that helped establish gene therapy as a new treatment modality in…
Botond Roska honored with 24th Perl-UNC Neuroscience Prize
The 24th Perl-UNC Neuroscience Prize has been awarded to IOB Director Botond Roska, in recognition of his work developing approaches to decode retinal circuitry and restore vision. At IOB, Botond Roska leads the Human Retinal and Central Visual Circuits Group. Roska’s lab explores how visual information is processed across the…
Karolina Kaminska receives Early Career Award at the ESHG 2024
We are thrilled to announce Karolina Kaminska has been honored with the Early Career Award for outstanding research by young scientists at the ESHG 2024 conference in Berlin. This prestigious award was presented in recognition of her spoken contribution entitled “Mutations in COQ8B are a novel cause of recessive non-syndromic…
Botond Roska and José-Alain Sahel win the Wolf Prize 2024 in the field of medicine
The Wolf Prize, considered one of the most prestigious international awards, recognizes outstanding achievements in various fields including medicine. Botond Roska, Director at the Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel (IOB) and Professor at the University of Basel, and José-Alain Sahel, Chair of Ophthalmology at the University of Pittsburgh…
Swiss National MD-PhD grants to two IOB scientists
The national MD-PhD grants program, supported by private foundations and in collaboration with the Swiss School of Public Health, has been awarding these grants annually since 1992. This highly competitive grant recognizes outstanding young physicians with a commitment to research, providing them with the skills necessary for a dual career…
Two IOB scientists receive the Swiss OpthAward 2024
The Swiss OphthAward recognizes young researchers for their contributions to ophthalmology and related fields. Fiona Müllner received the Swiss OphthAward in the category “Best Experimental Paper” for her work on thalamic inhibitory interneurons and their role in processing visual features published in Neuron this year. Mathieu Quinodoz received the Swiss OphthAward in…
IOB brings major European grant to Basel for gene therapies against vision loss
After several years of interruption, ERC Consolidator calls reopened this year to researchers in Switzerland, and Bence György’s proposal was selected among 3121 applications from across Europe. Researchers who receive ERC grants are considered among the strongest in their fields. The ERC grant provides around EUR 2 million over five…
Long-time collaborators Botond Roska and José-Alain Sahel win international prize for Translational Neuroscience
Basel, Switzerland, June, 2023In recognition of their pioneering work on restoring vision to blind patients using optogenetic therapy, Botond Roska and José-Alain Sahel were today awarded the International Prize for Translational Neuroscience by the Gertrud Reemtsma Foundation, managed by the Max Planck Society. The annual prize rewards biomedical scientists and…
Mathieu Quinodoz receives 2022 Young Investigator Award
In addition to providing new scientific information, his work will benefit people with ophthalmic diseases and other rare genetic conditions.