It’s that time of year again. It’s time for all of you to start thinking about your 2010 Bioscience Technology Researcher of the Year entries. The competition celebrates and rewards innovative, breakthrough, and benefit-driven research, along with the products used to achieve research success. The competition is open to researchers working in academic, government, institutional, or industry labs who have made a significant breakthrough in the past year.

Winners will be chosen by an independent panel of judges. Mike May, PhD, returns to help judge this year’s competition, and he is joined by last year's Bioscience Technology Researcher of the Year, C. Shad Thaxton, PhD, Northwestern University, and Suzanne Tracy, Editor-in-Chief of Scientific Computing.

Just like last year, we’re providing cash prizes of $2,500 for first place, $1,500 for second place, and $1,000 for third place. The first place winner will also be the subject of our May issue’s cover story. Second and third place winners will also be the subject of a brief profile, and honorable mentions will be named in the issue.

Just a brief overview of the last year's competition because I feel it may help those of you looking to enter this year's competition. The majority of entries came from academia, but biotech and pharma companies were also represented. I was excited to see a few international entries come in, and I hope that's a trend that continues in 2010.

I can tell you from experience, that the hardest part of this competition was deciding the winners. Every entry we received featured some pretty impressive research. Thaxton was named the 2009 Bioscience Technology Researcher of the year for his work in creating synthetic high density lipoproteins. Our second place winner, Carrolee Barlow, chief scientific officer, BrainCells, Inc., won for her work on neurogenesis as a target for small molecule therapies to treat various neurological conditions. Ian Macreadie, CSIRO Molecular and Health Technologies, was a third place winner for developing an assay to screen for chemo preventative agents for Alzheimer's disease. In addition to the three winners, the judges and editors chose 12 entries as honorable mentions.

So get those entries in. We’ve changed the submission process for this year, and it should be even easier to enter. Just visit www.regonline.com/bioscience_technology_2010_researcher_of_the_year to start the process. And, as always, should you have any questions or concerns about this year’s competition, feel free to contact me at robert.fee@advantagemedia.com. Best of luck to all who enter.

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