Prize Medal Winners

“From the very start of my independent career, I have had the great good fortune to work with a succession of exceptionally talented and motivated people. The award of this Prize Medal is as much a reflection of their work as it is mine. My first presentation as a PhD student was at a Microbiology Society meeting, possibly in 1981, so my connection with the Society goes back a long way!  It’s a huge honour for me to receive the Medal and I am very grateful.”

"I am still completely overwhelmed by it! I have looked up the previous winners and they are all very prestigious scientists, so I am very grateful to the people that nominated me. Multiple times in the past this award has been won by scientists from overseas, so if this is the start of a trend in celebrating UK microbiologists then I am very happy to be at the front of it."

“I am surprised, delighted, and honoured to receive the Microbiology Society Prize Medal. I am grateful to and proud of the many scientists who have come through my lab to go on this scientific adventure with me! It has been a privilege and thrilling to work with the team as they try to change the perception of bacteria from being thought of as asocial loners to being considered sophisticated interacting organisms that, by acting as collectives, can have a profound influence on nature, health, and disease. The Microbiology Society Prize Medal is a spectacular recognition of my lab team’s creativity, tenacity, and belief that bacteria still house many important mysteries and so they are worthy of us devoting our professional lives to exploring them.”

“I was surprised and am extremely honoured to be the recipient of this prize from the Microbiology Society. Britain and British science have occupied a special spot in my heart ever since I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory for Molecular Biology in Cambridge in 1967–70. So much of my subsequent life and science were shaped by my experiences there. In Cambridge, I was privileged to have known and interacted with many of the giants in the early days of molecular biology. Perhaps it is not surprising that I have spent my career trying to emulate them, both as scientists and as people. I am very grateful. Thank you so very much.”

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“I am most honoured to receive the Prize Medal, and humbled to join the illustrious list of recipients. Receiving the Prize also means that the theories and experimental work that I have been working on are beginning to be recognised in the wider world of ideas as being true and having utility. For all of these reasons, I am grateful to the Society.”

"I'd like to thank everybody involved in this work, especially Jennifer Doudna, who gave me the opportunity to do my postdoc with her – it was such a tremendous opportunity."

“The prize is a remarkable honor but of course it largely recognises the fantastic work of students, postdocs and staff that I have had the honor of working with. It means a great deal to me that the broader microbiology community finds value in the genome-resolved metagenomic research we have been doing over the last almost two decades.”

“It means a lot. It’s very pleasant to have other people recognise the significance of your work and to know that you’re doing useful things”

"British science and microbiology is such a big thing for me and being recognized at this level is really a great thing – thank you very much."

“The Microbiology Society has been my virological home. I came into virology very naive – I really had no background in it at all. We published some of our first papers in the Journal of General Virology and the Society meetings introduced me to the virology community. To get an award from a Society that has helped me so much means an awful lot.”

“It’s a tremendous pleasure to be recognised by the Society. I’ve been a member of SGM ever since I was a graduate student, so for about 50 years;  it’s a society I’ve always had high respect for – I think the SGM’s journals and activities are of the highest quality. I’m truly delighted and honoured.”

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