Professor Ashraf Brik from Technion (Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa) has been awarded the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Ashraf Brik will stay for a visiting professorship at Technische Universität Berlin hosted by UniCat-Professor Roderich D. Süssmuth.
Ashraf Brik © private
With this award Ashraf Brik has been recognized for his research in the field of peptides and protein chemistry. In particular, he has made important contributions to Chemical Biology by inventing novel chemical methods, which are of high importance in fundamental understanding of the ubiquitin signaling cascade at the molecular level. Ashraf Brik will come to UniCat on June 01 and stay initially for two months continuing his research within the next years at Roderich Süssmuth’s group (Research Fields D4 and E4).
Ashraf Brik completed his studies in chemistry at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (B.Sc.) and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (M.Sc.). Afterwards, he joined the Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in La Jolla in a joint program with the Technion for conducting his PhD studies and continued with his postdoctoral research in the field of protein synthesis and drug discovery, also at TSRI. Upon his return to Israel, he joined his alma mater, the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, as an associate professor, leading to a full professorship in 2012 from where he recently moved to the Technion.
Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award
The Humboldt Foundation grants up to 25 Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Awards annually to scientists and scholars, internationally renowned in their field, who completed their doctorates less than 18 years ago and who in future are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements which will have a seminal influence on their discipline beyond their immediate field of work.
Award winners are honored for their outstanding research record and invited to spend a period of up to one year cooperating on a long-term research project with specialist colleagues at a research institution in Germany. The award is valued at 45,000 EUR.
Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (1784 –1846) was a German astronomer, mathematician. He was the first astronomer who determined reliable values for the distance from the sun to another star by the method of parallax. Although he left school at the age of 14, he was appointed in January 1810 as director of the Königsberg Observatory by King Frederick William III of Prussia.