Dr Sergiu P. Pasca, 2022 IBRO Kemali International Prize recipient, to give lecture at the FENS Forum 2022
20 September 2021
Society & Partner News
The IBRO Dargut and Milena Kemali Foundation has announced that Sergiu P. Pasca, MD, has been awarded the 2022 IBRO-Dargut and Milena Kemali International Prize for Research in the field of Basic and Clinical Sciences “in recognition of his innovative research work using stem cell technology to create human brain organoids and assembloids, and their application to realistic studies of cellular mechanisms of human brain development and disease mechanisms.” The IBRO-Dargut and Milena Kemali International Prize will be awarded to Dr Pasca during the next FENS Forum in Paris, France (9-13 July 2022). FENS would like to congratulate Dr Pasca for receiving this award and is looking forward to his IBRO-Kemali Lecture at the Forum.
“Dr Pasca’s visionary research and discoveries in basic neuroscience have helped to improve human cellular models of the brain and develop new understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying disease. The IBRO-Kemali Prize honours his achievements and highlights the great importance of his work for the future of brain research.”
Dr Pierre Magistretti, President, IBRO Dargut and Milena Kemali Foundation
About Dr Pasca
Dr Sergiu P. Pasca is a tenured Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, the Bonnie Uytengsu and Family Director of Stanford Brain Organogenesis and a Stanford Bio-X faculty member at Stanford University, United States. He is also a New York Stem Cell Foundation Robertson Investigator and a Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Ben Barres Investigator. He has received several honours during his career including the Joseph Altman Award in Developmental Neuroscience by the Japanese Neuroscience Society (2021), the Judson Daland Prize from the American Philosophical Society (2021), the Vilcek Prize for Creative Biomedical Promise (2018) and recognition as a Nature Medicine’s Featured Physician-Scientists (2019).
Dr Pasca’s current research seeks to understand the rules that govern the molecular and cellular steps underlying the assembly of the human brain and the molecular mechanisms that lead to disease. His team’s unique research program combines rigorous in vivo and in vitro neuroscience, stem cell and molecular biology approaches to construct and deconstruct previously inaccessible stages of human brain development, degeneration and function. Dr Pasca has been a strong advocate for broadly sharing methods with the international scientific community, and he has been advancing the field by organising the main research conferences and training courses in the area of human cellular models of the human brain. Dr Pasca co-organised the FENS/SfN Summer School on Neural Stem Cells and Organoids and was one of the FENS Regional Meeting 2019 plenary speakers.
About the Prize
The IBRO Dargut and Milena Kemali International Prize for Research in the field of Basic and Clinical Neurosciences is awarded every two years (on even years) to an outstanding researcher, under the age of 45, who has made important contributions in the field of Basic or Clinical Neuroscience. The prize award is EUR 25,000, and the winner is invited to give a featured lecture at the FENS Forum.
The IBRO Dargut and Milena Kemali Foundation for Research in Neurosciences was established to promote research in the field of Basic and Clinical Neurosciences. Founded in 1996 by Dargut Kemali, a renowned psychiatrist in Italy, and by the will of his late wife Milena Agostini Kemali, its mission is to increase, support and promote scientific interaction between and among basic and clinical research groups through its Schools and Prize.