Nobel Prize Winner Ferenc Krausz Receives Semmelweis Budapest Award

Ferenc Krausz (L) receiving the award from Béla Merkely, Rector of Semmelweis University

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ferenc Krausz received the international Semmelweis Budapest Award on Thursday in Budapest. The institution’s prize is awarded to scientists who have achieved world-renowned results in natural sciences, whose work has pioneered new paths and served the advancement of humanity.

“The award is a driving force and motivation to strengthen our belief in the personalized, preventive medicine of the future through our joint efforts with my research team and the University. The infrared molecular fingerprinting method is promising, but we still have a lot of work to do to put it into practice,” said Ferenc Krausz after receiving the award.

The award was presented to the Nobel Prize-winning physicist by Béla Merkely, Rector of Semmelweis University. In his welcome speech, he stressed that the work of the Center for Molecular Fingerprinting (CMF), headed by Ferenc Krausz, is supported by the Neumann János Data Science Institute, which was established jointly with the university and his colleagues, with the ultimate goal of diagnosing diseases at an early stage by a simple blood test, and at the same time, selecting the optimal personalized treatment.

Ferenc Krausz has always been driven to ask the right questions, find the answers, and put his discoveries at the service of humanity. He has a special ability to bring people together for an important cause, whether it is a scientific goal or helping those in need. He uses his merits for good causes, donating the amount of his Nobel Prize in 2023 to the charity he founded to help children and young people affected by the war in Ukraine to get an education,”

said Béla Merkely.

The rector stressed that Ferenc Krausz’s whole career so far shows that he has always considered it important that his achievements should be used in the best and widest possible way.

Péter Ferdinandy, Vice-Rector for Science and Innovation of Semmelweis University, in his laudation, described Krausz’s scientific career, highlighting that in 2023, Krausz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his experimental methods for generating attosecond light pulses to study the movement of electrons within the atom, jointly with French physicists Pierre Agostini and Anne L’Huillier.

At the event, Krausz gave a scientific lecture in English titled “Laser pulses in medicine.”

Speaking to MTI after the ceremony, Béla Merkely said that the Senate of Semmelweis University decided in 2009, to establish a scientific excellence prize to reward the most outstanding researchers in the international context, in the spirit of Ignaz Semmelweis.

The prize has so far been awarded to four Nobel Prize winners, including Katalin Karikó and Ferenc Krausz.

“In the past five years we have awarded the prize to Hungarian researchers, including Péter Gloviczki, Botond Roska, and Balázs Gulyás. This proves that Hungarian researchers are making increasingly more discoveries in living science that can be put at the service of humanity,” said Merkely. The rector added that Krausz, with whom the university has been working for a long time, is looking for a way forward that could lead to the early diagnosis and appropriate therapy of civilization diseases in the long term.

Via MTI, Featured image: MTI/Bodnár Boglárka