Hungarian born Scientist Dr. Botond Roska is a role model for young scientists worldwide. Roska is cell biologist and world renowned expert in retina function. Working in both Switzerland and America he has been the recipient of a series of awards since 2016, the most recent of which was in January 2019.
In 2016 he won the Cogan Award, presented by the Association of Research in Vision and Ophthalmology in recognition of his contribution to the understanding of retinal processing and the structure and function of retinal circuits in health and disease. The video presentation by Roska below is from 2016.
Subsequently, in 2018 he was awarded the Bressler Prize by the Lighthouse Guild for his work on repairing visual dysfunction for patients with retinitis pigmentosa and other diseases of the retina.
“Dr. Botond Roska is being recognized for his innovative and outstanding research accomplishments,” Alan R. Morse, JD, PhD, President and CEO of Lighthouse Guild, said in a news release. “He is combining different disciplines to expand our knowledge of the retina and different stages of visual processing. His scientific achievements are powerful, precedent-setting and establish a new standard for retinal research.”
In addition to these acknowledgements, in August of 2018 Botond Roska was awarded the W. Alden Spencer Award, along with Silvia Arber, presented by the Department of Neuroscience and the Kavli Institute for Brain Science at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, in recognition of their outstanding research contributions
Most recently in January 2019, Roska was awarded the 2019 Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine for his work and the discovery of basic principles of visual information processing and the development of therapeutic strategies, such as gene therapy, to restore vision in retinal disorders.
An Alumni of Semmelweis University, he subsequently graduated from the University of California’s Berkeley Institute, and trained at Harvard University and Harvard Medical Faculty for genetics and virology. He later founded a biotechnology research institute in Basel, Switzerland.
Semmelweis University is one of several outstanding medical universities in Hungary, one other example is our very own Debrecen University.