2020 George Streisinger Award Winner: Alexander Schier, PhD

Alexander Schier, PhD
University of Basel
Basel, Switzerland

Award Lecture - Freaks and Geeks

Alex Schier obtained his PhD from the Biozentrum in Basel, Switzerland, where he studied the transcriptional regulation of homeobox genes in Walter Gehring's lab. He spent his postdoc in Wolfgang Driever's lab in Boston, where he screened for and characterized mutants affecting zebrafish development. He started his lab in 1996 at the Skirball Institute of the New York University School of Medicine and joined Harvard University in 2005. Last year, he moved back to the Biozentrum Basel, where he serves as Director. 

His lab defined the first morphogen-inhibitor pair for Turing-like pattern formation and discovered the microRNA-induced degradation of maternal mRNAs. He and his collaborators developed creative technologies to establish zebrafish as a model system and for the global reconstruction of differentiation and lineage trajectories. 16 of 20 graduate students in the Schier lab went on to postdoctoral research positions, and 26 of 30 postdocs started their own labs at leading institutions.

The International Zebrafish Society (IZFS) established the George Streisinger Award to honor Dr. Streisinger's outstanding contribution to the field. The award recognizes a senior investigator who has done sustained and foundational work that has opened new possibilities within the zebrafish field that benefit all research today. Read more about the Streisinger Award and its past recipients here.