US biochemist researching treatment of HIV and coronaviruses wins
Israel's Wolf Prize
[March 11, 2025]
JERUSALEM (AP) — An American biochemist whose research has helped
scientists make inroads into treating coronavirus and HIV has won this
year’s Wolf Prize, a prestigious Israeli award in the arts and sciences.
Pamela Björkman of the California Institute of Technology won the prize
for “offering new hope in the fight against infectious diseases,” the
Wolf Fund, which awards the prize, said Monday.
Björkman’s research “unlocked the secrets of how the immune system
identifies and battles pathogens, developing game changing approaches to
combat some of humanity’s most formidable viral enemies,” the fund said.
Eight others also received the state-funded prize, which has been
awarded annually for 47 years. Many of the award winners have gone on to
receive Nobel prizes.
Björkman grew up in Oregon and studied at the University of Oregon,
Harvard and Stanford before moving to Caltech to begin teaching in 1989.
Her research focuses on how the immune system identifies invading
pathogens. She has broken ground, the fund said, in how scientists
understand T-cell recognition and immunization strategies for HIV. T
cells are white blood cells that help fight off diseases.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, she has worked on developing a new strategy
to design immunogens that trigger certain antibodies against
coronaviruses.
“Pamela Björkman’s work provides a glimpse of a new rational design
strategy for future vaccines to deal with humanity’s greatest
immunization challenges,” wrote the fund.
This year’s prize in architecture was awarded to Chinese architect
Tiantian Xu for her work in rural China, which the prize committee said
“transformed villages throughout China economically, socially, and
culturally.”
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This image provided by the Wolf Foundation shows Chinese architect
Tiantian Xu, who won this year's prestigious Wolf Award for her work
in rural China. (Wolf Foundation via AP)
 Xu studied architecture at Harvard
Graduate School of Design before returning to China, starting her
own firm and working on a number of public projects that have
kickstarted village economies, the fund said. They include a bridge
connecting two villages separated by a flood, factories for tofu and
brown sugar and renovating abandoned stone quarries.
It lauded her “pioneering approach to rural development — one that
contrasts with the sweeping, uniform strategies that characterized
China’s urban expansion.”
Other recipients of this year's award include Jeffery Dangl of the
University of North Carolina, Jonathan Jones of the Sainsbury
Laboratory in England and Brian Staskawicz of the University of
California, Berkeley for agriculture.
Also receiving the prize are professors Jainendra Jain of
Pennsylvania State University, Moty Heiblum of Israel's Weizmann
Institute of Science, James Eisenstein of Caltech in physics and
Helmut Schwarz of the Technische Universität Berlin in chemistry.
Past laureates include astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, artist Marc
Chagall, conductor Zubin Mehta and musician Stevie Wonder.
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