A team led by Dr Mark Wass, Prof Martin Michaelis, and Dr Jeremy Rossman from the School of Biosciences at the University of Kent received the “Fight against Ebola Award” from the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) that included a prize money of US$ 2,000. Mark Wass was presented with the prize on 11th July at the ISCB annual meeting, Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB), in Orlando, Florida. The award recognised computational research on Ebola that provided “(1) high impact, (2) broad access, (3) measurable outcomes on understanding, handling, treating, or preventing the disease, and (4) close interaction with established mechanisms of Ebola control and research.” The decision of the selection committee was based on a research article that had revealed novel insights into the mechanisms that determine Ebola disease severity in humans (Sci Rep 2016;6:23743) and ongoing research of the team.
In addition to Dr Wass, Prof Michaelis, and Dr Rossman and their lab members, the team included Dr Mark Howard from the School of Biosciences and Prof Franca Fraternali from King’s College London and her co-workers.