Wilhelm Exner (1840-1931) was president of the Austrian Business Association. Exner established the modern type of vocational schools in Austria, was one of the creators of the Chamber of Labor and was co-founder of the Vienna Technical Museum. The law for examination and material testing goes also back to him. With the medal bearing his name, the Wilhelm Exner Medal Foundation has since honored eminent scientists whose theories, findings and results have initiated important trade-industrial applications. Over 230 inventors, researchers and scientists have been honored, including 21 Nobel Prize awardees. https://www.wilhelmexner.org/medalists/
The festive award ceremony on Wednesday, 15 May 2024 was framed by a scientific symposium at Palais Eschenbach, the “House of Entrepreneurs”, focusing on the topics of the medal winners. The aim of the Lectures is to bring together economic and scientific communities.
The session of Giulio Superti-Furga was supported by talks of Georg Winter, CeMM (Therapeutic innovation through chemical reprogramming of cellular degradation pathways), Martin Jechlinger, EMBL Heidelberg (Exploring treatment resistant breast cancer) and Harald Sitte, MedUni Vienna (Transport proteins: From structure and function to mechanism). At the evening celebration, Professor Uwe Sleyr, member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Wilhelm Exner Medalist himself, gave a heartfelt laudatio.
Trained in molecular biology by the Exner Medal winners Max Birnstiel and Charles Weissmann and the Wittgenstein Prize winner Meinrad Busslinger in Zurich and Vienna, Giulio Superti-Furga has developed an extraordinarily creative line of research to break new ground and open up new areas. His research covers a broad spectrum of topics, such as a) the organization of the eukaryotic proteome, b) the importance of intramolecular regulation of tyrosine kinases, c) the nature of many key players in innate immunity and oncology (LZTR1, IFIT1, AIM2, TASL, MTH1), d) the importance of membrane transporters in human pathophysiology.
Giulio Superti-Furga, “I am deeply honored to receive the Wilhelm Exner Medal for 2024! This is a prestigious recognition, and I would like to share this gratitude with the companies I founded with colleagues and collaborators, the leaders that were trained during my career, the community work that was always in the focus of my research endeavors. Thank you to the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Medical University of Vienna for providing an inspiring research environment in Vienna, and to the CeMM community for making things happen, especially the co-director Anita Ender. A big thank you to my wife and family for their enduring love and patience. It is great to see that the efforts and successes of recent years are having an impact on a scientific, social, cultural and economic level.”