The timing couldn’t have been worse. In March, just as Thailand’s coronavirus outbreak began to ramp up, three hospitals in Bangkok announced that they had suspended testing for the virus because they had run out of reagents. Thai researchers rushed to help the country’s clinical laboratories meet the demand. Looking for affordable and easy-to-use tests, systems biologist Chayasith (Tao) Uttamapinant at the Vidyasirimedhi Institute of Science and Technology in Rayong reached out to an old acquaintance: CRISPR co-discoverer Feng Zhang, who had been developing an assay for the coronavirus inspired by the gene-editing technology.
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March 21, 2018
Feng Zhang: From ESL to Revolution
Credited with the development of transformative technologies such as CRISPR, Feng Zhang delights in helping others realize their potential. “Every person has their own creativity and their own way of thinking about problems,” Feng says. “That’s part of the joy too, seeing how you can help people realize an even bigger impact.”
Creative Promise Prizewinner Amit Choudhary is used to crossing borders and breaking boundaries.
Molecular biologist Silvi Rouskin studies the structure of RNA viruses like HIV-1 and SARS-CoV-2, seeking weaknesses that could lead to treatments and interventions.
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2018
Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise
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Feng Zhang receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science for using light to manipulate the activities of brain cells in living animals and for enabling rapid alterations to the genomes of living organisms.
2019
Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise
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Amit Choudhary
Amit Choudhary receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science for the identification of a fundamental force integral to the structures of biomolecules like proteins and DNA, and for improvements upon the genome-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9.
2021
Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise
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Silvi Rouskin receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science for developing methods to unravel the shapes of RNA molecules inside cells and aiding the potential development of RNA-based therapeutics.
