In December 2024, the Director of the Academia Europaea Hub in Budapest, Peter Hegyi MAE (Semmelweis University Budapest) in collaboration with the Hungarian National Academy of Scientist Education, chaired by Andras Varro MAE (University of Szeged) organised two spectacular scientific events in Szeged and Iasi, respectively.
The 23rd Meeting of ‘Nobel Laureates and Talented Students’ took place at the University of Szeged. On this occasion, the Nobel laureate was Martin Chalfie ForMemRS (Columbia University, New York) who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his introduction of Green Fluorescent Protein as a biological marker. The two other guest lecturers were Ole Petersen FRS MAE (Cardiff University) and Shahrokh Shariat MAE (Medical University of Vienna). The three guests delivered plenary lectures to more than 1000 students, secondary school pupils and biology teachers from all over Hungary and Europe. The science festival also included visits to secondary school laboratories and intensive discussions with groups of university students.
Immediately after the Szeged event, Peter Hegyi, Ole Petersen, Martin Shalfie and Andras Varro travelled to Romania to participate in a symposium at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy Gregore T Popa in Iasi, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the award of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to George Palade ForMemRS (1912-2008), who was born in Iasi, but did his Nobel Prize winning work in the US. For this occasion, the Romanian government issued a new stamp commemorating this event.
Palade is generally recognised as one of the founders of modern cell biology, so it was fitting that Martin Chalfie, as a recent President of the American Society for Cell Biology, gave the first plenary lecture. Palade was particularly famous for his discovery of the secretory pathway in pancreatic acinar cells. This theme dominated his Nobel Prize Lecture, and it was therefore a special privilege for the pancreatologists, Peter Hegyi and Ole Petersen, to give the two other plenary lectures at this event. Ole Petersen, whose work was cited in Palade’s published Nobel Prize Lecture (Science 1975), knew Palade and talked specifically about his interactions with this great investigator. All the talks at the Palade symposium can be viewed on YouTube.
Iasi is often described as the cultural capital of Romania and the symposium therefore, very appropriately, ended with a special performance of Puccini’s La Boheme at Iasi’s beautiful National Theatre.
Published 8th January 2025. For more information contact AECardiffHub@cardiff.ac.uk
