Dr.-Willmar-Schwabe-Young-Talent-Prize

Dr. Willmar-Schwabe-Young-Talent-Prize

The aim is to motivate young talents to address phytochemical and phytopharmacological questions, especially with potential clinical implications, in order to advance our understanding of  the therapeutic potential of natural products.
Bestowed annually during GA conference

  • Awarding Institution: Society for Medicinal Plant and Natural Product Research (GA)
  • Endowing Sponsor: Dr. Willmar Schwabe GmbH & Co. KG, Karlsruhe (Germany)
  • Endowment: 2,000 EURO

Application

  • PhD students & Postdocs (normally 30 years or younger)
  • GA membership for at least one year prior to application, with paid fees
  • At least one peer-reviewed publication as 1st author is available and is being submitted as basis for the assessment (can be augmented by additional papers from the same topic), which is being accompanied by an
  • application letter outlining the overarching research strategy (in hindsight and forward-looking) for the topic under evaluation

Jury

President of GA & nominee of the GA president & Schwabe representative, based on an evaluation report (evaluator/s selected by the GA president)

The deadline of submissions for the 2025 announcement is 30. March 2025 (via email to events@ga-online.org)

List of Award Winners

2024: Dr Cherry Lifeng Li

Dr. Cherry Lifeng Li is a Research Assistant Professor at the Teaching and Research Division of the School of Chinese Medicine at Hong Kong Baptist University. With expertise in quality control, structural characterization, and research on in vivo fate and metabolic tracking of natural polysaccharides, she has made significant contributions to the field. Li has authored 27 SCI papers, with individual citations exceeding 104, demonstrating her impact on the scientific community. Her H-index of 10 reflects the quality and influence of her research. Additionally, she holds 8 patents, both domestically and internationally, showcasing her innovative work. Her research focus is currently on exploring natural polysaccharide-protein interactions and developing a nature-sourced polymer-based drug delivery system.

2023: Dr Adriano Rutz

Dr. Adriano Rutz is a pharmacist by training.

After working in the analytical research laboratory and R&D department of Tradall SA (Bacardi Group), he obtained his PhD in phytochemistry at the University of Geneva, under the supervision of Professor Jean-Luc Wolfender.

As an advocate of open science and open data, he is the proud author of the LOTUS initiative, a new way of sharing knowledge in the field of natural products research.

This initiative is a cornerstone of phytopharmacological research. Based on the valuable knowledge built over 100 years of phytochemical studies, LOTUS has the potential to facilitate the incorporation of natural products in the era of informatics. The LOTUS initiative promises to strengthen the foundations on which future phytochemical investigations will be conducted and helps building bridges to other fields. It is designed to efficiently inform machine learning strategies in the best circumstances. Its use can range from taxonomically informed metabolite annotation, to finding structural novelty, providing molecular arguments for biodiversity conservation up to guiding drug discovery for various diseases.

Adriano Rutz’s current research as a PostDoc (ETH Zurich) focuses on the development of open informatics tools and mass spectrometry-based strategies to better understand the chemistry of living organisms.