Award for sensing technology used in chirals r&d
This year\'s Heinrich Emanuel Merck Award goes to Professor Torsi at the University of Bari, Italy
The 2010 Heinrich Emanuel Merck Award for Analytical Sciences will go to Luisa Torsi, Professor of Analytical Chemistry at the University of Bari in Italy.
The award, which is worth €15,000, will be presented at the EUCHEMS Congress in Nuremberg, Germany, on 31 August, 2010. The congress is expected to attract more than 3,000 scientists from throughout Europe.
The Award recognises scientists under the age of 45 whose work focuses on new methods in chemical analysis and the deployment thereof in applications aimed at improving the quality of human life, for example in fields such as environmental protection, life sciences or the biosciences.
Torsi won the award for her research on organic semiconducting chemical sensors based on organic thin-film field effect transistors. Such components permit highly sensitive analytical measurements. This highly interesting technology makes it possible to measure the spatial arrangement of atoms in chiral molecules.
‘Formerly the Heinrich Emanuel Merck Award was granted exclusively for achievements in analytical chemistry. It is now also aimed at researchers working in life sciences and biosciences, since Merck has also made great strides in this direction. This has considerably expanded the pool of candidates,’ said Dr Klaus Dieter Franz, head of Analytical Services at Merck.
The field effect protein sensor being developed by Luisa Torsi at the University of Bari of Analytical Services at Merck. Professor Torsi said: ‘I am delighted and honoured to have been awarded this prestigious prize as Merck enjoys a good reputation in the scientific community. I view this prize as recognition of work conducted at the interface of science and business. After all, innovation and entrepreneurial thinking are interconnected.’
Merck began granting the Heinrich Emanuel Merck Award in 1988 to mark the centennialof the first standardisation of analytical methods by Dr Karl Krauch, a Merck chemist. Previous prizewinners include Professor Norman Dovichi, for his work on capillary electrophoresis, which made the sequencing of the human genome possible, and Professor Shuming Nie for his multicolour optical coding for biological assays using quantum dot-tagged microbeads, which make it possible better to detect cancer cells in the body.