David Bikard and Romain Koszul, winners of the 2017 Pasteur Vallery-Radot Prize

The Pasteur Vallery-Radot Prize was set up by Jacqueline Pasteur Vallery-Radot, the wife of Louis Pasteur’s grandson. Each year, the prize goes to two French Institut Pasteur scientists under the age of 50 who have carried out a major scientific project in the field of biology or physics/chemistry over the last five years.

After consultation with the Institut Pasteur, the two prizes are awarded by the National Library of France, the residuary legatee of Jacqueline Pasteur Vallery-Radot's estate.

At a ceremony hosted by the President of the French National Library (BnF), Laurence Engel, and attended by Pascale Cossart, Permanent Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences, and Christian Bréchot, President of the Institut Pasteur, these two prizes were awarded on June 21 to David Bikard, Head of the Synthetic Biology five-year group, and Romain Koszul, Head of the Spatial Regulation of Genomes five-year group.

These awards recognize the two scientists' outstanding research: David Bikard's work on interactions between bacteria and their viruses with the aim of deriving new tools to help understand and tackle pathogenic bacteria, and Romain Koszul's research to investigate the functional organization of the chromosomes of microorganisms using a combination of interdisciplinary approaches.

To find out more, read the press release