Members of the European Peptide Society Council have named Professor Ernest Giralt as winner of the 2nd Dimitrios Theodoropoulos Memorial Lecture Award for his significant contributions to peptide chemistry in the last five years. Giralt, coordinator of the Chemistry and Pharmacology Porgramme at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) and senior professor at the University of Barcelona, will receive the award during the 7th Hellenic Forum of Bioactive Peptides, which will be held in Greece on 16 and 17 May. Profesor Giralt will give a presentation during the Opening Session.

Ernest Giralt (Viladecans, 1948) leads the “Design, synthesis and structure of peptides and proteins” group at IRB Barcelona. He is a leading expert in the synthesis and structural elucidation of peptides using a technique called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR). The research performed by Giralt combines conceptual elegance with a highly practical focus on the construction of biomolecules. Among other projects, Giralt’s group studies therapeutic peptides to combat diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and schizophrenia. One of the objectives of the group is to design molecules that interact with protein surfaces for therapeutic applications. During his career, Giralt has introduced many novel techniques for the construction and interpretation of the structures of new peptides.

With a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Barcelona (UB), he spent post-doctoral stays in the University of California, San Diego, and at Scripps Research Institute, in the same city. He has been a Professor of Organic Chemistry at the UB since 1986. He has authored more than 325 scientific articles, 10 patents, review articles and three books that are reference materials in his field. During his scientific career he has received several awards and prizes, among these the Narcís Monturiol Medal (1992), the Leonidas Zervas Award (1994), University Research Award from the Autonomous Government of Catalonia (2001), the NMR prize (2002), and the National Research Prize (2003), the latter two given by the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry.