Anouk Rijs wins Minerva Prize 2015

During Physics@FOM Veldhoven - the largest physics congress in The Netherlands - Anouk Rijs was awarded the Minerva Prize by FOM Foundation for her research in the area of biological molecules. The prize was awarded to Rijs by Jet Bussemaker, the Dutch Minister for Education, Culture and Science.

Every two years FOM, the Foundation for Fundamental research on Matter, crowns the best physics publication from a female researcher with the Minerva Prize. This year Anouk Rijs receives the prize for her effort. The committee is highly impressed by the quality of her article that was published in April 2014 in 'Angewandte Chemie International Edition'.

In the article Rijs describes a new, innovative method for obtaining information about the three-dimensional structure of small biological molecules. Her method is the first to make use of far infrared light for this purpose.

Dr. Anouk Rijs (right) with Minister Jet Bussemaker (credits: FOM/Bram Saeys)

More information

Read more about the Minerva Prize and Rijs' research in the prize announcement of September 2015: Anouk Rijs wins Minerva Prize 2015. For more information, contact Anouk Rijs via a.rijs@science.ru.nl or +31 24 365 39 40.

Career

Anouk Rijs gained her doctorate in 2003 from VU University and the University of Amsterdam and she subsequently worked as a postdoc at the University of Amsterdam and the University of Santa Barbara (UCSB). In 2007 she became a Veni researcher at the FOM Institute for Plasma Physics Rijnhuizen, where she received a tenured appointment in 2010. Since 2012 Rijs has been assistant professor in the Molecular and Biophysics research group within the FELIX Laboratory of Radboud University.

Reference

Gas-phase peptide structures unraveled by far-IR spectroscopy, Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Vol 53, issue 14, 3663-3666, April 2014