2025 Chi-Bin Chien Award Winner
2025 Award Winner: Victoria Deneke, PhD
Congratulations to Victoria Deneke, the 2026 Chi-Bin Chien Awardee. The Chi-Bin Chien award recognizes in equal measure the research and generosity of early career researchers in the zebrafish community. Victoria is a Research Associate in the laboratory of Andrea Pauli at the Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna, Austria. Originally from El Salvador, Victoria received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering in the United States at the University of Notre Dame. Following her undergraduate degree, she pursued a PhD in Cell Biology at Duke University, where she investigated the synchronization of nuclear cycles in early Drosophila embryogenesis in the laboratory of Stefano Di Talia. In 2019, Victoria attended the Woods Hole Zebrafish Course and joined the laboratory of Andrea Pauli at the IMP as a postdoctoral researcher. There, she has been studying conserved molecular mechanisms of vertebrate fertilization using zebrafish. In a remarkable paper published in Cell in 2024, Victoria used the protein-proteins interaction prediction tool AlphaFold-Multimer to identify a novel sperm factor required for fertilization and uncovered the molecular mechanism by which it enables the initial interaction between sperm and egg in zebrafish and humans. Her use of AlphaFold was specifically called out in Denis Hassabis’s Nobel lecture in December 2024. In addition to her research, Victoria is passionate about mentoring, scientific outreach and science communication. She helped to inaugurate the Talents-For-Future program at the Vienna Biocenter, a program for talented students from developing countries to carry out a summer research internship at the Vienna Biocenter. Congragulations Victoria, the zebrafish community is lucky to have you as a future leader!
