Breakthrough Prizes Awarded to Five Life Sciences Researchers
Five life sciences researchers were honored as winners of the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, which honors “transformative” advances toward understanding living systems and extending human life. Founders of the Breakthrough Prize include Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, 23andMe CEO and co-founder Anne Wojcicki, Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma and his wife Cathy Zhang, technology investor Yuri Milner and his wife Julia Milner.
Prizes of $3 million each were presented to:
- Edward S. Boyden, Ph.D., of MIT, for the development and implementation of optogenetics.
- Karl Deisseroth, M.D., Ph.D., of Stanford University and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, also for the development and implementation of optogenetics.
- John Hardy, Ph.D., of University College London, for discovery of mutations in the Amyloid Precursor Protein gene (APP) that cause early onset Alzheimer’s disease.
- Helen Hobbs, M.D., of University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, for the discovery of human genetic variants that alter the levels and distribution of cholesterol and other lipids.
- Svante Pääbo, Ph.D., of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, for pioneering the sequencing of ancient DNA and ancient genomes.
