[2019-03-04] UCMR congratulates Yaowen Wu, Professor at the Department of Chemistry and principle investigator at UCMR to the Göran Gustafsson Prize in Molecular Biology 2019!In the other areas of research these young scientists will be honoured: Petter Brändén (mathematics), KTH Stockholm, Anders Johansen (physics), Lund University, Björn Högberg (chemistry), Karolinska Institutet, Kristian Pietras (medicine), Lund University. Each awardee will receive SEK 5,100 000 as research funding and a SEK 250 000 personal prize.
In its motivation, the Göran Gustafssons Stiftelsen för naturvetenskaplig och medicinsk forskning wrote in the press release publishe today, that Yaowen Wu receives the prize ”för sina innovativa molekylära studier av intracellulär transport och autofagi” (for his innovative molecular studies of intracellular transport and autophagy).
Dr. Yaowen Wu received his BSc in Chemistry from Sun Yat-sen University in 2001 and his MS in Organic Chemistry from Tsinghua University in 2004 in China. After graduating as Dr rer. nat. (2008) at the Technische Universität Dortmund working at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund and a postdoctoral study in cell biology at King’s College London, he has been leader of an Otto Hahn group at the Max Planck Institute in Dortmund, Germany, since 2010. In 2012, he has been group leader of Chemical Genomics Centre of the Max Planck Society in Dortmund, Germany. He was then appointed as Professor in Biochemistry at the Umeå University in 2018.
His research interests are in chemical biology of membrane trafficking and autophagy. He has received awards and honors including Wallenberg Academy Fellow (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences), European Research Council (ERC) grant, Behrens-Weise Award, Biomedicine Research Prize and Otto-Hahn Award.
Read more about the Göran Gustafson prize and the awardees 2019 (including short popular science profiles in Swedish):
More information about Professor Yaowen Wu and his research: