Gertrud Meissner Award

The Gertrud Meissner Award is an annual award dedicated to scientists in an early phase of their career, under the age of 40, who are doing excellent research in the field of mycobacteriology.  It is aimed at supporting high quality work in all fields of mycobacteriology such as diagnostics, resistance mechanisms, molecular epidemiology, population genetics or host  pathogen interaction.

The award is named after Gertrud Meissner in recognition of her significant efforts to stimulate and build up a mycobacteriology research community in Europe. She was the first head of the Department of Medical Microbiology at the Research Center Borstel. Her work was the basis for rational drug susceptibility testing in 1950. Also, she has established principles of resistance development in clinical isolates and demonstrated its association with virulence. She continuously supported the mycobacteriology community, was a founding member of the European Society of Mycobacteriology and chair of the first congress of the society held in Borstel in 1980.

The Gertrud Meissner Award is endowed with 2000 € and will be handed over on the occasion of the annual ESM congress where the awardee will be given the opportunity to present his/her work.  

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Criteria:

- Researchers under 40 (or less than 7 years after PHD)

- An active and paid member of the society

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Members of the ESM may submit a proposal for a candidate (by 30 April), together with the following documents (in English):
• letter of recommendation
• CV of the candidate
• short summary of the major points of the research work
• publication record
• contact information (e-mail and postal address)

Submissions to be sent by e-mail to the ESM office.

Decision criteria are the scientific and technological quality of the work, publications, conducted research projects, and innovative new concepts/ideas. Proposals will be evaluated by an expert panel nominated by the steering committee of the ESM and a representative of our sponsors (the Research Center Borstel).  We thank the Research Center Borstel for their generous support.

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Over the past years we have had very worthy winners:

• 2023 Conor Meehan

• 2022 Sophia Georghiou

• 2021 Josie Bryant

• 2019 Grant Theron 

• 2018 Timothy Walker

• 2017 Matthias Merker “Emergence and spread of multidrug resistant tuberculosis in Eurasia (Combat an old enemy with new weapons)”

• 2016 Claudia M. Denkinger “TB diagnostics – needs, achievements and future ambitions”

• 2015 Claudio U. Köser

• 2014 Paolo Miotto “smallRNAs in Mycobacterium tuberculosis”

• 2013 Iñaki Comas

• 2012 Susanne Homolka “Genetic and biological diversity of clinical M. tuberculosis complex strains”