Davor Solter is the first Croatian researcher to become a laureate of the Gairdner Foundation; the official award ceremony is slated for October in Toronto
Croatian researcher Davor Solter has received the Canada Gairdner Award for biomedical research for the discovery of mammalian genomic imprinting, which results in the specific expression of genes inherited from only one parent, becoming the first Croatian researcher to received this prestigious award, the Canadian embassy announced.
The prestigious Canadian Gairdner International Award was presented to Croatian biologist Davor Solter on the 27th of March for the discovery of mammalian genomic imprinting that causes parent-of-origin gene expression and its consequences for development and disease, the Canadian embassy said in its announcement.
The Gairdner Foundation confers the top Canadian award for scientific research. Its core goal is to recognize and reward international excellence in core research that impacts human health. 373 awards have been presented since 1957 to scientists in thirty countries. Eighty-seven of the recipients have gone on to receive the Nobel Prize. All award recipients also receive a prize of 100,000 Canadian dollars.
Davor Solter is the first Croatian researcher to become a laureate of the Gairdner Foundation. The Canadian embassy here in Zagreb will mark the event in July of this year, with the official award ceremony slated for October in Toronto.
Davor Solter was born in Zagreb in 1941, where he went on to earn a degree in medicine and his doctorate in biology. He has lived abroad since 1971. He worked with the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia for twenty years before moving to Germany in the early 1990s where he served as the director of the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology. He was a pioneer in cloning techniques and has authored numerous scientific papers, some of which are considered critical in developmental biology, the embassy said.
(Večernji.hr)