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EPFL Scientist wins Dirac medal of the World Association of Theoretically Oriented Chemists

January 13, 2005

EPFL Chemistry Professor Ursula Roethlisberger has won this year's Dirac medal, a prestigious award given annually to the "most outstanding theoretically oriented chemist in the world under the age of 40", by the World Association for Theoretically Oriented Chemists (WATOC). Dr. Roethlisberger will receive the medal January 16, at the 2005 WATOC conference in Capetown, South Africa.

Director of the EPFL's chemistry and computational biochemistry laboratory, Professor Ursula Roethlisberger conducts research at the intersection of biochemistry, physics and biocomputing. Using the powerful calculation capabilities made possible by supercomputers, she models and simulates complex biological systems, studying the behavior of molecules such as proteins or DNA to better understand their function and the chemical reactions they induce in living organisms.

Already the recipient of the 2001 Ruzicka Prize from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), Dr. Roethlisberger is internationally recognized by her colleagues as a leader in her chosen field of study. As the head of an interdisciplinary team that includes physicists, chemists, biologists and engineers, Dr. Roethlisberger has cemented her scientific reputation with a program that unites fundamental and applied research in a novel way. Her work "demonstrates perfectly how computational chemistry can be used to tackle biological problems", notes Thomas Rizzo, dean of the school of basic sciences at EPFL.

Dr. Roethlisberger's research covers a wide range of subjects. She has contributed to establishing the role of rhodopsin, a light-sensing molecule in the retina whose degeneration has been linked to vision problems. She also conducts research with new anti-tumor compounds, with the goal of improving their ability to target cancer cells while leaving healthy cells unharmed. Other research work includes illuminating the structural changes in prion proteins that are the origin of neurodegenerative diseases, and exploring the repair mechanisms of DNA.

Dr. Roethlisberger was born in Solothurn, Switzerland, and conducted her doctoral studies under the guidance of Professor Wanda Andreoni, head of the computational biochemistry department at the IBM research Center in Ruschlikon, Switzerland, and professor Ernst Schumacher of the University of Berne. After obtaining her PhD, Dr. Roethlisberger pursued postdoctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania in the US and at the Max Planck Institute for solid state physics in Stuttgart, Germany. She then took a position as Assistant Professor of computational inorganic chemistry at ETHZ, and moved to EPFL as Professor of chemistry and computational biochemstry in 2002.

Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL)