The third edition of the BIAL Foundation's international award, the BIAL Award in Biomedicine, is open, with nominations until June 30. With the amount of 300.000 Euros, this award seeks to recognise a work published in the broad biomedical field within the last ten years, the results of which are considered of exceptional quality and scientific relevance.
An independent and international Jury will choose the winning work among the high-quality empirical research articles in biomedicine, published from 2014 onwards in peer-reviewed journals, which are nominated by the voting members of the Jury, the members of the Scientific Board of the BIAL Foundation, previous BIAL Award winners or Scientific Societies. The Jury may also invite other scientific institutions to submit nominations. Self-nominations are not allowed.
Chaired once again by Ralph Adolphs, Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience and Biology at Caltech (California Institute of Technology), the Jury includes more 12 members designated by the European Research Council, Council of Rectors of Portuguese Universities, European Medical Association, Scientific Board of the BIAL Foundation, previous winners of the BIAL Award and editors of the British Medical Journal and the New England Journal of Medicine.
Ralph Adolphs states that the Jury members are excited and expectant about this new edition. “We hope to receive nominations from different groups of scientists, such as universities, societies, academies or research institutes. Nominations of works by scientists at any stage of their career and from any country will be welcome.”
The chairman of the BIAL Foundation, Luís Portela, says that it has been very gratifying “to be able to watch the mobilization of researchers from different entities and different countries so that, together, we can recognize the most remarkable and relevant discoveries in the biomedical area in the last years".
In the last edition of 2021, this award distinguished an article published in the journal Nature in 2017 focused on mRNA technology, which was used in Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines to prevent covid-19. The winning team was led by American scientist Drew Weissman and included 36 co-authors, researchers from the Universities of Pennsylvania, Duke and Kansas State (USA), Harvard Medical School (USA), National Institutes of Health (USA), Bioqual Inc. (USA), Acuitas Therapeutics (Canada) and BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals (Germany) at the time of publication of the article.
Created to distinguish the most remarkable scientific discoveries in biomedical field, the BIAL Award in Biomedicine takes place biannually, in odd years, alternating with the Prémio BIAL de Medicina Clínica. It has the support of the President of the Portuguese Republic, the Council of Rectors of Portuguese Universities and the European Medical Association.
The regulation, nomination form and more information about this edition are available here.
