Margreet Koopman and Fernando Salgado-Polo receive Bijvoet PhD of the Year Award

The Bijvoet Centre for Biomolecular Research is happy to congratulate Margreet Koopman and Fernando Salgado-Polo with both receiving the PhD of the Year Award at the occasion of the 2023 Bijvoet Symposium! The PhD of the Year awardees of the Bijvoet Centre are selected by the Scientific Advisory Board of the institute from nominations by their supervisors.

Margreet Koopman

Understanding neurodegenerative protein folding diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease requires determining if molecular chaperones are able to disassemble protein fibrils. Margreet Koopman was able to show that the central chaperone machinery is not able to disaggregate patient derived fibrils of the protein Tau. She did her work in the group of Stefan Rüdiger and successfully defended her PhD thesis on April 20, 2022.

Fernando Salgado-Polo

Fernando Salgado-Polo focussed his research the kinetics of lipid phosphodiesterases, in particular Autotaxin. He was able to characterize a new class of Autotaxin inhibitors, now known as “Type IV” inhibitors, and characterized their mode of action in liver disease. He did his research in the group of Anastassis Perrakis at the NKI and received his PhD degree on October 31, 2022.