The FEBS Anniversary Prize of the Gesellschaft für Biochemie und Molekularbiologie (GBM) is awarded for outstanding achievements in the field of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology or related sciences by the upcoming generation of senior scientists, with the awardees selected from researchers under 40 years of age invited to give a lecture at one of the symposia or workshops held during a FEBS Congress. The award comprises a certificate and €2000.
FEBS and GBM are pleased to announce that this year’s recipients of a FEBS Anniversary Prize are David Balchin (Francis Crick Institute, United Kingdom) and Marieke Oudelaar (Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences, Germany). We hope you will join us at their talks during the 50th FEBS Congress to hear about their work and see them congratulated on their award. Find more details below about their careers and Congress talks.
David Balchin
David Balchin received his PhD from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2014, working in the group of Heini Dirr. He then moved to the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany, to work with F. Ulrich Hartl as an EMBO Long-Term fellow. Since 2020, he has been a Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute in London. His research focuses on the early steps of de novo protein folding in cells, occurring as a nascent polypeptide emerges from the ribosome.
50th FEBS Congress talk: “Pathways of protein biogenesis”, during the Symposium Elucidating protein folding: Mechanisms of folding, misfolding, and intervention in diseases, 5 July 2026
Marieke Oudelaar
Marieke Oudelaar obtained her PhD from the University of Oxford, UK in the research groups of Douglas Higgs and Jim Hughes in 2018. After her PhD, she received a Junior Research Fellowship to continue her research in Oxford. In 2020, she moved to Germany, to start the group “Genome organization and regulation” at the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences in Göttingen. Her research focuses on the relationship between the 3D organization of the genome in the nucleus and the regulation of gene expression, which she explores by integrating biochemistry, molecular biology, and computational approaches.
50th FEBS Congress talk: “Molecular drivers of 3D genome folding and their function in gene regulation”, during the Symposium Intracellular landscapes: Decoding the cell’s inner organization, 5 July 2026
