Jury

Peter Courtland Agre, M.D. A native Minnesotan, Peter Agre studied chemistry at Augsburg College (B.A. 1970) and medicine at Johns Hopkins (M.D. 1974). Following Internal Medicine Residency at Case Western Reserve University Hospitals of Cleveland and Hematology-Oncology Fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Agre joined the faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine where his laboratory became widely recognized for discovering the aquaporins, a family of water channel proteins found throughout nature and responsible for numerous physiological processes as well as multiple clinical disorders. Following a term as Vice Chancellor at Duke Medical Center, Agre joined the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2008, where he is University Professor and Director of the Malaria Research Institute and Program Director of the NIH International Center of Excellence in Malaria Research for Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Agre shared the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Roderick MacKinnon “for discoveries concerning channels in cell membranes.” Agre has received additional honors including the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America. Agre is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine; he is past-Chair and member of the Committee on Human Rights of the National Academies.

From 2009-11, Agre served as President and Chair of the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences and led scientific diplomacy visits to Cuba, Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea), and Myanmar (Burma). Agre and his wife Mary, a teacher, have been married 36 years and have four grown children.

 

Dr Agre is currently an University Professor and the Gilman Scholar Director at Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute, Bloomberg School of Public Health.

 

 

Elizabeth Blackburn, Ph.D. is the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discoveries in telomere biology that have uncovered a new understanding of normal cell functioning and given rise to a growing field of inquiry.

 

 

Pascale Cossart After studying chemistry in Lille (France), Pascale Cossart obtained a master degree at Georgetown University, Washington DC, in 1971. Back in France she obtained her PhD in Paris, in 1977 working with G. Cohen in the Pasteur Institute where she is still now. Her thesis project was the amino-acid sequence determination of an E coli enzyme. During her postdoctorate with M. Yaniv, she sequenced the gene encoding this enzyme, thrA, the first gene sequenced in the Pasteur Institute. In the early 80’s, she switched to the study of DNA-protein interactions and together with B. Gicquel, collaborated with J. Beckwith in Harvard to analyze the site-specificity of the E. coli cyclic AMP binding protein. In 1986, she started a group within the Unit of Génie Microbiologique headed by Julian Davies and embarked on her work on Listeria monocytogenes, an intracellular bacterium responsible for food borne infections that she had chosen as a model to study intracellular parasitism. Her work has used a combination of innovative approaches to unravel the mechanisms underlying Listeria infection. Listeria is now one of the most documented bacterial pathogens and a reference in infection biology.

 

P. Cossart is Professor at the Pasteur Institute, Head of the Unit « Interactions Bactéries -Cellules », Inserm Unit U604 and INRA USC2020. Since 2000, she is an international scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 2009, she was awarded an « ERC advanced Grant ». P. Cossart has received a number of awards including the L’Oreal Prize for women in Science (1998), the Louis Pasteur Gold Medal of the Swedish Society of Medicine (2000), the Robert Koch Prize (2007), the Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine (2008). She is an elected member of EMBO (1995), of the French Academy of Sciences (2002), of "Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina" (2001). She is a foreign member of the American National Academy of Sciences (2009) and of the Royal Society (2010).

 

Alice Dautry, is President of the Institut Pasteur. She was trained as a physicist at the University of Paris and as a molecular biologist at the University of New York.

 

She has devoted her career in France and during her stays in the United States, at the National Institutes of Health and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to research, training, teaching and evaluation and management of research. Prof. Alice Dautry has published some 130 publications in international scientific journals dealing with her studies in cell biology, receptors and infectious agents. Her teaching activities included: Professor at Ecole Polytechnique, Director of the Molecular Biology of the Cell course at the Institut Pasteur, training of PhD students and post doctoral fellows.

She is a member of the Board of trustees of higher education and research institutions, and international organisations, Ecole Polytechnique, Institute of Science and Technology Austria (Austria), Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (Switzerland), Chr Hansen (Denmark), of the External Reference Group for Health Research Strategy of the WHO and Instituts Pasteur in the world.

 

 

Depei Liu, M.D., Ph.D. is the President of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS) and Peking Union Medical College (PUMC), Beijing, China.

 

Prof. Liu was trained as Medical Molecular Biologist at CAMS/PUMC and the University of California San Francisco, currently is a Professor and Director of National Laboratory of Medical Molecular Biology, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, CAMS/PUMC. His areas of research are Gene Regulation and Gene Therapy, including gene regulation in differentiation and development; Transgenic Animals and Disease Models, especially animal models involved in pathogenesis of cardiovascular diseases. His research has been recognized by numerous awards, including the first prize of Medical Sciences of China.

 

Prof. Liu is a member of Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), was the Vice President of CAE and President of Chinese Association of Biomedical Engineering; He is currently the Vice President of Chinese Medical Society, member of the Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and member of Third World Academy of Sciences.

 

 

Robert Sebbag, is currently Vice President Access to Medicines at Sanofi. In his role, Dr Sebbag participates in the company’s access to medicines strategy development for the Southern Hemisphere. Prior to joining sanofi, Dr. Sebbag worked in Brussels for the European pharmaceutical industry association (EFPIA) on creating a communications platform for the pharmaceutical companies operating in Europe. In his prior role, he was Senior Vice President of Communications for the vaccine company, Aventis Pasteur (today known as sanofi pasteur). In addition to his activities within the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Sebbag is also teaching public health courses within the Paris hospital system, focusing on tropical parasitic diseases. Dr. Sebbag is active within the French Red Cross and has participated in numerous health missions in the Southern Hemisphere. Dr. Sebbag is a Doctor in Medicine with specialty in tropical parasitic diseases and training in psychiatry.

 

 

 

Elias Zerhouni, M.D., is the President, Global Research & Development, and a member of the Executive Committee for Sanofi. This new position brings R&D medicines and vaccines under one umbrella, enabling Sanofi to maximize opportunities for sharing and partnering the extensive wealth of experience and expertise that exists within the company, across Global Operations and the Vaccines Division.

Prior to becoming the President for Global Research & Development at Sanofi, Dr. Zerhouni served as a Scientific Advisor to the company and played an instrumental role in redesigning the Sanofi R&D model to foster increased innovation through scientific networks and exchange, creativity and flexibility.

Dr. Zerhouni’s academic career was spent at the renowned Johns Hopkins University and Hospital where he was professor of Radiology and Biomedical engineering and senior adviser for Johns Hopkins Medicine. He served as Chair of the Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Sciences, Vice Dean for Research and Executive Vice Dean of the School of Medicine from 1996 to 2002 before his appointment as Director of the National Institutes of Health from 2002 to 2008. In that position he oversaw the NIH’s 27 Institutes and Centers with more than 18,000 employees and a budget of $29.5 billion (2008).

In November, 2009, President Obama appointed Dr. Zerhouni as one of the first presidential U.S. science envoys.

Dr. Zerhouni has founded or co-founded five start-up companies, authored more than 200 publications and holds eight patents and a number of prominent positions on several Boards, including most recently, Senior Fellow of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations, the board of trustees of the Mayo Clinic and the Lasker Foundation. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, received the prestigious Legion of Honor medal from the French National Order in 2008, and was recently appointed as Chair of Innovation at the College de France and elected as a member of the French Academy of Medicine.