The Jaume I Awards, created in 1989 and convened annually by the Generalitat Valenciana and the Valencian Foundation for Advanced Studies, are considered the most prestigious in the country, and recognise the career and contribution of scientists and entrepreneurs who have developed most of their professional activity in Spain.
Two of the seven winners in the 2024 edition are researchers from the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB) centres.
The awards ceremony – with €100,000 and a gold medal for each winner – took place on 14 February at the Lonja de los Mercaderes in Valencia. You can watch the full video here:
Jordi Sunyer, head of the Childhood and Environment programme at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) and professor at UPF, received the Award in the clinical research and public health category for his studies on how environmental pollution affects health, especially that of children. Specifically, his contribution to the recognition of new risk factors in the asthma epidemic, including air pollution and other environmental factors, was recognised.
Luis Serrano, director of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), received the Award in the new technologies category. The doctor in biochemistry has been recognised for the creation of the FoldX software, a tool based on artificial intelligence for the prediction and design of protein structures; in addition to having created several medical innovation startups and generated a ‘living pill‘, a genetically modified bacteria to function as a therapeutic agent in the human microbiome.
The awards ceremony was presided over by King Felipe VI and was attended by various Valencian political figures.
