Falling Walls Winner

Dr Jeremy Herren, icipe scientist and leader of the Centre’s SymbioVector Project, has been selected as one of ten winners of the Falling Walls 2021, in the Life Sciences category (Link: https://falling-walls.com/breakthroughyear/finalists-2021/).

Held as part of the Berlin Science Week, the Falling Walls Conference is a unique international platform for global leaders in science, business, politics, the arts and society. This year, the event aims to celebrate excellent science – the latest breakthroughs and outstanding projects that are contributing towards solving the world’s biggest challenges, and the bright minds behind them. 

Since joining icipe in 2014, Dr Herren has spearheaded research that has discovered a microbe in malaria-transmitting mosquitoes, which is capable of blocking transmission of the disease’s parasites from the insects to people. Further, Dr Herren and his team have established that the microbe, which they have named Microsporidia MB, is transmitted vertically by being passed from female mosquitoes to their offspring at high rates, as well as sexually between mosquitoes. This knowledge will enable the development of a strategy to increase the spread of the microbe through mosquito populations, thus limiting their ability to infect people with the malaria parasite. (Read more: http://www.icipe.org/news/malaria-transmission-blocking

As one of the 10 finalists of Falling Walls, Dr Herren qualifies for selection as the Science Breakthrough of the Year 2021, to be announced on 15 September. If awarded this title, he will be invited to present his research to a global audience and to speak on the grand Falling Walls stage in Berlin on 9 November 2021.

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