Richard R Ernst Lecture 2022 – Vincent Racaniello

It was my great honor to be selected as the Richard R Ernst Lecturer for 2022.

Following is the text of the email that I received on 25 September 2020 informing me that I had received this award. Note that the committee had already made its decision in December 2019!

The aim of the Richard R. Ernst Lecture is to strengthen the relationship and understanding between the sciences, society, and politics and to raise awareness for the questions and challenges our global society is facing today and will face in the future. The RRE Lecture is a public lecture for a scientifically interested general audience. As part of the event the lecturer will be awarded the Richard R. Ernst Gold Medal. Richard R. Ernst is the 1991 recipient of the Chemistry Nobel prize. Previous recipients of the Gold Medal are:

2009 Prof. Dr. Gottfried Schatz (Biozentrum Basel)
2010 Kofi Annan (Former UN Secretary-General)
2011 Prof. Dr. Ernst Ludwig Winnacker (Secretary General of the Human Frontier Science Program Organization)
2012 Prof. Dr. Sir Roger Penrose (University of Oxford)
2013 Prof. Dr. Ahmed Zewail (Caltech)
2014 Prof. Dr. Kamil Ugurbil (University of Minnesota)
2015 Prof. Dr. Steven Chu (Universities of Berkeley and Stanford)
2017 Prof. Dr. Felicitas Pauss (ETH Zurich und CERN)
2019 Prof. Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier (MPI for the Science of Pathogens, Berlin)

The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the accompanying public discourse have shown more than ever how important the education of the general public about scientific topics and the process of research is. With your series of podcasts, where current research in virology, immunology, microbiology, etc. is discussed with experts in an accessible manner, you provide an invaluable service to the general public and the scientific community.

Watch a recording of the ceremony and my lecture below.