awards
French Academy of Sciences, French National Academy of Medicine award, Ágnes Ullmann Prize, Institut Pasteur Young Scientist Prize: Institut Pasteur scientists recognized
• Philippe Bousso, elected as a member of the French Academy of Sciences
The French Academy of Sciences keeps up with the pace of scientific progress by regularly electing new members. This enables it to cover all scientific fields as widely as possible, including emerging fields, and encourages fruitful debates and research within its groups and committees. In the early 2000s, it amended its articles of association to move towards a younger membership: at each election session, at least 50% of new members must be under the age of 55. The Academy currently has 300 members, 116 foreign associate members and 58 corresponding members.
Following the elections in 2025, The French Academy of Sciences elected recently 18 new members including Philippe Bousso, elected as a member in the Human Biology and Medical Sciences section.
Head of the Dynamics of Immune Responses Unit, Philippe Bousso studies the cellular interactions that orchestrate immune responses, using dynamic in vivo imaging techniques. He is particularly interested in understanding how immunotherapies work against cancer to improve their effectiveness.
The ceremony to welcome newly elected members will be held on June 2,2026.
Read the Academy's press release
• Yasmine Belkaid, winner of the 2025 French National Academy of Medicine award
The French National Academy of Medicine is a learned society composed of physicians, surgeons, biologists, pharmacists and veterinarians recognized for their scientific research and their positions of responsibility in the field of health. Eleven national members have been Nobel Prize laureates since the Academy was established.
On December 16, Yasmine Belkaid, President of the Institut Pasteur, received the French National Academy of Medicine award, which encourages any work or research deemed worthy by the Academy.
Find out more about the National Academy of Medicine (in French)
• Sarah Merkling and Nicola Festuccia, winners of the 2025 Ágnes Ullmann Prize
In accordance with the wishes of Ágnes Ullmann, the renowned Institut Pasteur scientist who passed away in 2019, an award has been set up in her name to recognize the work of young scientists in molecular biology or microbiology.
The aim of the Ágnes Ullmann Prize aim is to encourage early career scientists. It is awarded to two scientists (one female and one male) for their outstanding contribution to research in life sciences at an Institut Pasteur laboratory.
The two winners for the 2025 edition are:
Sarah Merkling, head of Insect infection and Immunity five-year group (G5) since January 2026 (scientist in the Insect-Virus Interactions unit led by Louis Lambrechts upon her nomination)
Nicola Festuccia, scientist in the Epigenomics, Proliferation and the Identity of Cells unit led by Pablo Navarro Gil.
• Clara Mendia and Raphaël Jeger-Madiot, winners of the 2025 Institut Pasteur Young Scientist Prize
In 2018, the Institut Pasteur introduced the Institut Pasteur Young Scientist Prize. The award, established to mark the Institut Pasteur's 130th anniversary, is presented each year to a PhD student and a postdoctoral fellow who were first authors of high-level research papers published during the year.
The 2025 winners are:
Clara Mendia, PhD student in the Progressive Sensory Disorders, PathoPhysiology and Therapy unit, supervised by Sandrine Vitry and Aziz El Amraoui, for her article published in Molecular Therapy in 2024 : “Clarin-2 gene supplementation durably preserves hearing in a model of progressive hearing loss”
Raphaël Jeger-Madiot, postdoctoral fellow in Lisa Chakrabarti's research group within the Virus and Immunity unit led by Olivier Schwartz, for his research work published in The Journal Experimental Medecine in 2024 : “Modeling memory B cell responses in a lymphoid organ-chip to evaluate mRNA vaccine boosting”.