28 February 2019

Elite Research Price Goes to Outstanding Protein Research

Prize

Professor Chunaram Choudhary is one of this year’s recipients of the Ministry of Higher Education and Science’s annual recognition of excellent research, the Elite Research Prize. He is honoured for his fundamental discoveries of how specific proteins send signals inside the cells in the body and can help stabilise the DNA.

Photo: Søren Kjeldgaard

Each year the Ministry of Higher Education and Science awards the Elite Research Prize to some of the most talented researchers in the country. To receive the prize, the researchers must have conducted ‘excellent world-class research’, and that is exactly what one of this year’s recipients, Professor Chunaram Choudhary, has done.

The protein researcher whose work is especially concerned with protein regulation and cell signalling is one of two prize winners from the University of Copenhagen this year. The other is Professor Rebecca Adler-Nissen from the Department of Political Science.

‘I am very happy to receive this prize. Particularly because it is a recognition of our basic research and the entire field of protein research’, says Chunaram Choudhary from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research.

10,000 Citations
Chunaram Choudhary’s research focuses on how proteins modified and tuned to perform different functions. And on how proteins interact in so-called networks and thus affect each other’s function.

According to the Independent Research Fund Denmark’s recommendation of Chunaram Choudhary for the Elite Research Prize, his international recognition within the field is one of the reasons why he receives the prize.

’Chunaram Choudhary is a leading researcher within proteomics and its application for creating epoch-making knowledge about signalling pathways in the cells. He is published in the world’s best scientific journals, and his work has been quoted more than 10,000 times. He has received several prizes for his research and attracted a series of prestigious grants’, the recommendation reads.

The Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at University of Copenhagen also has a recipient of an Elite Research travel grant, which are awarded during the same ceremony as the Elite Research Prizes. PhD-student Laura Korsholm at Department of Biomedical Sciences and Rigshospitalet, is receiving the grant for her research in the genetics of people with arrhythmias.

The Elite Research Prize is presented by Minister for Higher Education and Science Tommy Ahlers and a representative of the Royal House at a ceremony in the Royal Opera House on Thursday 28 February at 13.00.

Read more about Chunaram Choudhary and the other prize winners on the Ministry of Higher Education and Science’s page on the Elite Research Prize.

 

Contact:
Professor Chunaram Choudhary
+45 24 42 66 43
chuna.choudhary@cpr.ku.dk