The 2006 Grammaticakis-Neumann Prize in photochemistry
was awarded to Prof.
Dr. Torsten Fiebig from Boston College and Prof.
Dr. Hans-Achim Wagenknecht from the University of Regensburg for their joint
contributions to the elucidation of the mechanism of charge transfer in DNA. The
award ceremony took place at the University of Zurich on October 13, 2006 as a
highlight of the Fall Meeting od the Swiss Chemical Society. The joint lecture
presented with humour by the two awardees was a model of excellent scientific
standard, didactic clarity and team work.
Torsten Fiebig
Torsten Fiebig obtained his PhD with Jürgen
Troe at the University of Göttingen in 1996 for his work on electron transfer
in covalently linked bichromophores. After a postdoctoral stay at Caltech with
Ahmed Zewail during which he became familiar with the topic of charge transfer
in DNA, he was appointed as a junior faculty member at the Technical University
in Munich in 2000 and started there his collaboration with Hans-Achim Wagenknecht
on charge transport in DNA. This collaboration went on after Torsten Fiebig moved
to Boston College as an assistant professor in 2004. Fiebig's research interests
lie in the fundamental understanding of molecular interaction between electronic
p-systems, in particular DNA, DNA-protein complexes
and conjugated organic materials.
To
Torsten Fiebig's own website
Hans-Achim Wagenknecht
Hans-Achim Wagenknecht started his academic life
in Basel where he earned his PhD in the group of Wolf-Dieter Woggon in 1998. He
then moved to Caltech for a postdoctoral stay with Jacqueline Barton where he
became familiar with DNA chemistry - and met Torsten Fiebig. Back in Germany at
the Technical University in Munich in 2000, he pursued his habilitation on charge
transfer in DNA and synthetically modified oligonucleotides and was finally appointed
as a professor of chemistry at the University of Regensburg in 2006. His research
focuses on the synthesis and characterization of modified DNA bases, DNA-binding
peptides and oligonucleotides which are used to study the mechanisms and rates
of charge transfer and the electronic properties of DNA.
To
Hans-Achim Wagenknecht's own website
Hans Achim Wagenknecht shares the Grammaticakis-Neumann
prize with Torsten Fiebig for good reason as he developed syntheses of specifically
taylored covalently linked DNA-chromophore complexes for his colleague to investigate
by time-resolved spectroscopy. Their research contributed to a better knowledge
of the fundamental processes of electron transport through DNA which is important
to understand the mechanisms of radical induced DNA damage. In a larger context
these projects are significant to biological and medical applications of anti-cancer
compounds which interact with DNA by electron transfer.
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