ISPR PRIZE WINNERS PS17 – Maastricht, 2016

Lifetime Achievement Award

(Conferring honorary lifetime membership of ISPR)

Prof Jean-David Rochaix
Université de Genève, Geneva (Switzerland)
To acknowledge his lifetime of outstanding contributions to understanding photosynthesis

Communications Award

(Conferring honorary lifetime membership of ISPR)

Prof James Barber
Imperial College London (UK)
To acknowledge his outstanding efforts to communicate photosynthesis to the general public

Innovation Prize

(Award prize money from ISPR sustaining sponsor LiCor Inc.)

Prof David Kramer
Michigan State University (USA)

For developing innovative instrumentation and methodology for research in photosynthesis.

Melvin Calvin-Andrew Benson Award

(Award prize money from ISPR sustaining sponsor Springer)

Prof Andrew Leakey
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (USA)
For his outstanding work on the adaptation of plants to global environmental change

Robin Hill Award

(Award prize money from ISPR sustaining sponsor Springer)

Prof Nicholas Cox
Australian National University (Australia)
For his innovative work on the mechanism of water oxidation

Poster Prize Winners

A committee of 28 discussion leaders and the two organizers (Roberta Croce and Herbert van Amerongen) chose 8 posters for awards from among 600 posters presented at the congress.

The top three posters were: (1) “The electric field component of the proton motive force sensitizes Photosystem II to damage” by Geoffry Davis, Atsuko Kanazawa, Mark Aurel Schöttler, Kaori Kohzuma, John Froehlich, A. William Rutherford, Mio Satoh-Cruz, Deepika Minhas, Stefanie Tietz, Amit Dhingra, and David Kramer; (2) “The redox potential of the primary quinone electron acceptor of Photosystem II: the effect of bicarbonate” by Andrea Fantuzzi, Katharina Brinkert, Sven De Causmaecker, Anja Krieger-Liszkay , and A. William Rutherford; (3) “Three-dimensional visualization of the internal plastid membrane network during the first stages of grana formation” by Lucja Kowalewska, Radoslaw Mazur, Szymon Suski, Maciej Garstka, and Agnieszka Mostowska

These were followed by the subsequent five posters (of equal ranking): (4) “Reversing evolutionary adaptation – effective transferal of Rubisco small subunits back into chloroplasts” by Elena Martin Avila, Yi-Leen Lim, Robert Sharwood, Douglas Orr, and Spencer Whitney; (5) “Thylakoid membrane architecture in Synechocystis depends on CurT, a homolog of the granal Curvature Thylakoid proteins” by Steffen Heinz, Anna Rast, Lin Shao, Andrian Gutu, Irene L. Gügel, Eiri Heyno, Mathias Labs, Birgit Rengstl, Stefania Viola, Marc Nowaczyk, Dario Leister, and Jörg Nickelsen; (6) “Photobiohybrid systems allowing efficient photocurrent generation and coupling with other biomolecular systems” by Fred Lisdat, Kai Stieger, Dmitri Ciornii, Sven Feifel, Heiko Lokstein, Adrian Kölsch, Mahdi Hejazi, and Athina Zouni; (7) “Orange carotenoid protein burrows into the phycobilisome to provide photoprotection” by Dvir Harris, Ofir Tal, Denis Jallet, Adjele Wilson, Diana Kirilovsky, and Noam Adir; and (8) “Carotenes are not essential for photosynthesis in plants” by Pengqi Xu, Gert Schansker, Volha Chukhutsina, Ludwik Bielczynski, Ralph Bock and Roberta Croce.

Govindjee (wearing Robert Emerson’s lab apron from the 1940s-1950s) gave to the award winners copies of books from the series that he and Tom Sharkey edit: “Advances in Photosynthesis and Respiration” (Springer; http://www.springer.com/series/5599).

From left to right: Douglas Orr (on behalf of E.M. Avila), Steffen Heinz, Fred Lisdat, Pengqi Xu, Govindjee, Dvir Harris, Lucja Kowalewska, Andrea Fantuzzi, and Atsuko Kanazawa (on behalf of G. Davis). Photo by Alberto Natali