Antwerp researcher wins so-called Oscar of science
Rosa Rademakers, a researcher affiliated with the university of Antwerp, has been awarded the Breakthrough Prize for a groundbreaking discovery she made in 2011.
Rademakers, who also works at the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology (VIB), unearthed a genetic link between frontotemporal dementia and ALS, the condition Stephen Hawking lived with: in both cases, the same genetic mutation can cause the disease.
Rademakers stayed humble and sang the praise of her colleagues in the laboratory. “I’m the one who gets to accept the award, but I do that in name of the many people” fighting together to get these illnesses understood.
The Breakthrough Prize is second only to the Nobel in terms of prestige, and is second to none in terms of prize money. She gets to share 3 million dollars with her colleague researcher neurologist Bryan Traynor, who detected the same genetic mutation around the same time Rademakers did.
Congratulations to Rademakers, and to the University of Antwerp, and may this research pave the way for more breakthroughs and more Breakthrough Prizes.