Professor Birgitta Henriques Normark and Professor Staffan Normark from the Karolinska Institutet will receive the Prix Aboensis recognition prize, granted for the very first time by the Turku University Foundation. The new prize is awarded as a recognition for efficiently combining basic research and clinical science.
The Prix Aboensis Prize is worth €40,000 and is awarded from the fund of Auli and Paavo Toivanen, emerita and emeritus professors who spent most of their research careers at the University of Turku.
The prize is given to a person or a pair of partners as a recognition for particularly distinguished contributions to the productive collaboration between basic research and clinical science. The work receiving the award must have been done mainly in Finland, the Baltic countries, or Scandinavia.
The suggestions for the recipients of the prize are reviewed by a scientific committee of experts, the Chair of which is Academician Sirpa Jalkanen.
Birgitta Henriques Normark, of the Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital, and Staffan Normark, of the Karolinska Institutet, have focused their research efforts on infectious diseases. Furthermore, they combine basic research with clinical and epidemiological research in a unique manner. In addition, they have educated a whole new generation of students.
Auli and Paavo Toivanen both established their own funds in the Turku University Foundation in the 1980s, and in 2006, the funds were merged. Ever since the Toivanens started their scientific careers, the research they have conducted has strongly been linked to clinical patient work and the extensive use of patient data, which also determined the purpose of the fund.
Birgitta Henriques Normark and Staffan Normark will hold a celebratory lecture at BioCity (Tykistökatu 6, Turku) in the Presidentti auditorium of the Mauno Koivisto Centre on 12 May 2022, at 1.15pm–2.15pm, with the title “Pneumococcal infections – from basic science to clinical research”. The lecture is held in English and is open to everyone.
