The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has decided to award
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2006
jointly to
Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello
for their discovery of
"RNA interference – gene silencing by double-stranded RNA"
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2006
jointly to
Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello
for their discovery of
"RNA interference – gene silencing by double-stranded RNA"
It is nice to see that this year the Nobel Prize in Medicine has been awarded to two researchers in the field of genetics.
To be honest, I obviously lack the necessary background in biology to properly understand the meaning and implications of their research, but still their work is somewhat connected to my own research interests and I am happy to observe that this area of scientific knowledge is currently one of the hottest in terms of attracting the attention of the international community.
Furthermore, it seems that Dr. Fire was actually an Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins just a few years ago, before he moved to Stanford.
I guess that these considerations make this year’s award particularly encouraging for someone like me, who has just set out on a long road towards a PhD and the pursuit of a career in scientific research. Today, two new professional role models have emerged.
To be honest, I obviously lack the necessary background in biology to properly understand the meaning and implications of their research, but still their work is somewhat connected to my own research interests and I am happy to observe that this area of scientific knowledge is currently one of the hottest in terms of attracting the attention of the international community.
Furthermore, it seems that Dr. Fire was actually an Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins just a few years ago, before he moved to Stanford.
I guess that these considerations make this year’s award particularly encouraging for someone like me, who has just set out on a long road towards a PhD and the pursuit of a career in scientific research. Today, two new professional role models have emerged.
Congratulations !!
So here it is..
Maybe you'd like to follow his path... wouldn't you?
Actually biology has always been my secret preferred field. I have never gone that way because a combination events so it's great that you're working in something "similar" to that.
By the way.. you weren't studying maths? what are you doing messing with RNA?
Thanks for your post, David. Good to see you around here.
Since you ask, I'll tell you that you are right, I'm studying maths, but I am not studying pure maths...(thanks heaven!;-)
I am studying applied maths, and so far my intended field of application is closely related to biology and genetics.
Quoting the brief description of my current research interests from my website at Hopkins:
"Understanding the way in which genes interact among themselves to orchestrate the basic functions of life has become a main challenge of modern biology. The levels of expression of these genes (measurements of abundance of mRNA) provide a source of quantitative information for the study of such relations that has recently been made accessible to a wide scientific community through the development of microarray technologies... I am interested in the development of new Machine Learning approaches to address the challenge of modeling gene interaction networks from microarray data."
In any case, it is true that, for the moment, all my work has mainly consisted of simulations carried out in a computer and I have not yet had much chance to interact with any real biology scenarios... but, hey, you know what they say:
"One step at a time!" ;-)
looks like a np problem ;)