ISBT Awards and Prizes
This page displays information on all ISBT awards, prizes and fellowships.
Please click on the title below to read more about procedures, regulations and previous winners.
Judith Chapman Award
Benefits and conditions
The value of the award is up to €7,500 in the form of a scholarship to undertake a leadership / management course. In addition, an annual membership of ISBT if not already a member and complimentary attendance at an ISBT congress including travel and accommodation will be funded. The award will be made biennially, associated with the ISBT International congress, where it will be presented at the opening ceremony.
The grant to undertake the course will be paid directly to the providing institution on registration for the course.
The winner will provide an article for Transfusion Today outlining their experience on the course and how it has benefitted their practice.
Eligibility
Transfusion professionals in a leadership role at an early stage of their career (5-10 years’ experience), are eligible for nomination by an ISBT member. Nominees need not be a current ISBT member.
Call for nominations
Recipient of Judith Chapman 2024
2024
Beukou Fonkou Hygin Steve
Passionate about translating transfusion medicine-related research into evidenced-based practice. Moreover as transfusion medicine specialist, inquisitive about developing context-based protocols in clinical transfusion and global blood safety programmes for the community. This drive led Steve to join the Quality Management and Global Blood Safety working parties of the ISBT. Moreover, Steve was selected as a Harold Gunson Fellow at the ISBT congress of 2021 and was an “ I TRY IT” 2023 mentee.
Post his MD degree as valedictorian, he obtained a scholarship to specialize in transfusion medicine at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. Currently, he serves a transfusion medicine specialist and head of blood transfusion services for the Cameroon Baptist Convention Health Services (CBCHS) with over 5000 staff. He oversees the improvement of its quality management system via bridging the gap between demand and supply of blood, ensuring GMP of blood components, appropriate use of clinical blood, hemovigilance, training and education of the healthcare staff involved in transfusion etc while working towards international accreditation such as that of the African Society for Blood Transfusion.
His passion in PDMPs further led him to join the Global Blood Supply WP of the ISBT where he takes part in activities of the Safe Plasma Proteins subgroup. Furthermore, he was one of the few Harold Gunson Fellows in 2021, presented a couple of scientific research at the ISBT congresses and is an I TRY IT Mentee 2023. In addition, merging digital technology and transfusion medicine led to the birth of the social venture, Blood Track (www.bloodtrack.cm), which he coordinates.
His aspiration to contribute in the transfusion medicine world at a bigger scale, spurred him to enroll in the Management in Transfusion Medicine Program (MBA in transfusion medicine) offered by the University of Groningen in partnership with Sanquin.
Jean Julliard Prize
Benefits and conditions
The value of the Prize is €5,000. The Prize winner will be presented at the next International Congress of the ISBT, with a certificate stating their name and the title of the scientific contribution. The winner(s) will be required to give a 25-30-minute lecture based upon their submission, in a Jean Julliard session during the ISBT congress at which the prize is awarded. Congress expenses will be covered, in line with current invited speaker conditions for registration, travel and accommodation. No Prize will be awarded if the Prize winner is not present at the Congress, unless proof acceptable to the Awards and Prizes Committee has been offered, that their absence is justified.
Eligibility
The Prize is open to applications from scientists who are, at the time of submission of their manuscripts, no more than 40 years of age, and to those over 40 but at an early career stage, i.e. within five years of post-graduate qualification. The applicant need not be an ISBT member. Members of the Executive Committee, as well as members of the Awards and Prizes Committee and their co-workers are not eligible to apply for the award.
Jean Julliard Prize Application Form
ISBT Award for Developing Countries
Benefits and conditions
Certificate presented at the opening ceremony of the next international congress of the ISBT. Full sponsorship for two delegates from the winning organisation to attend the congress at which the award is presented (airfares, registration, accommodation and per diem (up to Euro 6,000). Opportunity for a short presentation at the Global Blood Safety Working Party Meeting at the ISBT congress at which the award is presented. Sponsorship of an education symposium in the country of the winning applicant (value up to Euro 10,000)
Eligibility
Applications are open to organisations providing blood transfusion services, departments of transfusion medicine within medical institutions and blood centres based in low or lower-middle-income countries (LMIC). Qualifying countries will be those designated as LMIC by the World Bank. ISBT Board members are not eligible to be the designated representative of an organisation making an application.
Call for Applications
ISBT will announce “request for applications” on its website and via other correspondence.
ISBT Award
Benefits and conditions
The ISBT Award is in the form of a certificate of achievement. The recipients will receive their certificate during the opening ceremony of an ISBT congress for which the registration fee will be waived. There is no additional financial award.
Eligibility
To have made a significant contribution to transfusion medicine and science, and a major contribution to the goals of the ISBT.
ISBT Presidential Award
Information
The Foundation Transfusion Medicine grants this Award to a senior person who has made eminent contributions to transfusion medicine or a related field through original basic or applied research, the practice of transfusion therapy or through significant educational and/or service contribution to the field.
A short curriculum vitae of the proposed candidate and a description of his/her contribution in transfusion medicine, accompanied with three signatures of ISBT members who support the nomination, should be sent to the Secretary- General of the Foundation, Henk Reesink.
The Nomination Committee (consisting of the ISBT President, the ISBT President-Elect, the ISBT Scientific Officer, the Chairman and a member of Board of the Foundation Transfusion Medicine) will decide which candidate will be nominated.
The ISBT Presidential Award is presented every two years at the International Congress of the ISBT.
Recipients of the ISBT Presidential Award
Thierry Burnouf
Thierry, PhD, currently serves as a Distinguished Professor and Vice-Dean at the College of Biomedical Engineering, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan. He established and leads a research lab focusing on platelets and extracellular vesicles in regenerative medicine, cell therapy, and drug delivery. He also holds an Honorary Professorship at the University of Lille, France.
Specializing in plasma fractionation and virus safety, Thierry has published over 300 scientific papers on the development and clinical applications of products derived from plasma and platelets. He is a member of the editorial boards for Vox Sanguinis, Platelets, Biologicals, and Transfusion Clinique et Biologique. In addition, he serves as the Secretary of the ISBT Working Party for Global Blood Safety, Treasurer of the Cellular Therapies Working Party, and advises the WHO on safe blood products, contributing to several guidelines valuable for countries with medium to low resources.
Thierry received the 2019 IPFA Award for his 'exceptional scientific contributions to plasma fractionation technologies, and virus inactivation and removal procedures'. He was also awarded the Outstanding Research Award from Taiwan's Ministry of Science and Technology in 2021, along with multiple teaching and research awards from Taipei Medical University.
Anneke Brand
Anneke Brand, Professor in Haematology and Transfusion Medicine, passed away Sunday 21 November 2021 at the age of 75. She was a pioneer in both the immunological and the clinical aspects of blood transfusion. Her research led to the universal leukocyte-reduction of all cellular blood components in many countries. She further studied transfusion-related immunomodulation (TRIM), which had a beneficial effect on the outcome of kidney transplantation. In the 1970s she developed a laboratory test to select suitable blood donors for patients with HLA antibodies. She established a registry of blood donors that are homozygous for certain HLA alleles and studied the clinical effect of HLA-matched platelets. In 2000 she was the first to become a professor of Transfusion Medicine in Leiden. As promotor and co-promotor, she supervised over 20 PhD students and co-authored more than 350 papers. She received numerous awards for her contributions to the field, including the ISBT Presidential Award in 2020 and the Landsteiner Award in 2021.
She had a tremendous scientific drive and encyclopedic up-to-date knowledge in many fields of medicine, was well-respected by her colleagues and was adored by her patients.
She will be deeply missed.
Michael Busch
Past President (2022-2024)
Michael Busch earned his MD and PhD degrees at the University of Southern California followed by residency training in Pathology, Laboratory Medicine and Transfusion Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He is currently Director of Vitalant Research Institute (VRI) and Senior Vice President for Research and Scientific Affairs at Vitalant, a national network of blood centers and donor testing laboratories. He is also a Professor of Laboratory Medicine at UCSF. Michael is one of the world’s leading transfusion medicine scientists, well-regarded for his ground-breaking work in such transfusion-transmitted diseases as HIV, HBV, HCV, HTLV and West Nile virus and protection of the nation’s blood supply from these and other emerging pathogens including ZIKV and SARS-CoV-2. He has published over 550 peer-reviewed scientific articles, editorials and book chapters. Michael is a member of the Transfusion Transmitted Diseases Committee of AABB, the Research and Development Advisory Committee of Canadian Blood Services and several World Health Organization panels.
Harvey G. Klein
Dr. Klein is Scientist Emeritus at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. For more than 40 years he served as Chief, Department of Transfusion Medicine at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health. Following graduation from Harvard College, Dr. Klein received his doctor of medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and completed both his residency and hematology fellowship at Johns Hopkins where he remains Adjunct Professor of Medicine and Pathology.
Dr. Klein has authored or co-authored more than 300 publications pertaining to blood transfusion. He co-authored two editions of Mollison’s Blood Transfusion in Clinical Medicine, often referred to as the “gold standard” textbook in this discipline and has served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Clinical Apheresis, Associate Editor of Biologicals, and on the editorial board of Blood. He is currently an editor of Transfusion and The Journal of Translational Medicine.
Dr. Klein has been Chair of the US Pharmacopoeia Blood and Blood products Committee, and currently chairs the American National Red Cross Medical Advisory Council. He is a former Council President of the National Marrow Donor Program and Past President of the American Association of Blood Banks. He is a charter member of the US Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability. Dr. Klein has received numerous honors, including the NIH Director’s Award, the Presidential Award of the International Society of Blood Transfusion for lifetime contributions to Transfusion Medicine, and the Fantus Medal, the foremost recognition of
the AABB. The Public Health Service has awarded Dr. Klein the Commendation Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal, and the Secretary’s Distinguished Service Award, the highest civilian award given by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Dennis Lo
Dennis Lo is the Director of the Li Ka Shing Institute of Health Sciences, the Li Ka Shing Professor of Medicine and Professor of Chemical Pathology of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He is also the Associate Dean (Research) of the Faculty of Medicine of CUHK. Dennis Lo received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Cambridge and the Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the University of Oxford.
Following his training at Oxford, he was appointed as the University Lecturer in Clinical Biochemistry and Honorary Consultant Chemical Pathologist at the John Radcliffe Hospital, the teaching hospital of the University of Oxford Clinical School. He was also a Fellow at Green College, Oxford.
Dennis Lo returned to Hong Kong in 1997. In the same year, he discovered the presence of fetal DNA in maternal plasma. His group has since remained at the forefront of this field. His group was the first to report the presence of cell-free fetal RNA and fetal epigenetic markers in maternal plasma and pioneered the use of such markers for noninvasive prenatal diagnosis. Dennis Lo and his colleagues were also the first to show that cell-free fetal nucleic acids in maternal plasma could be used for the noninvasive prenatal diagnosis of fetal trisomy 21 and had devised multiple solutions for this hitherto difficult diagnostic problem, including methods based on plasma RNA-SNP allelic ratios, plasma epigenetic markers, digital PCR and massively parallel DNA sequencing. With the use of massively parallel sequencing and the development of novel bioinformatics strategies, Dennis Lo's group succeeded at deciphering a genome-wide genetic map of the fetus through the analysis of the small amounts of fragmented DNA floating in the blood of pregnant women. This scientific achievement lays the foundation for developing non-invasive prenatal diagnostic tests for multiple genetic diseases in a non-invasive way.
In the area of cancer detection, Dennis Lo has pioneered a number of approaches to cancer liquid biopsy, especially for the detection of nasopharyngeal carcinoma and genomewide approaches for screening multiple types of cancer.
In recognition of his work, Dennis Lo has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the King Faisal International Prize in Medicine in 2014, the Future Science Prize - Life Science Prize in 2016 and the 2021 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2011, as a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2013 and as a Founding Member of the Academy of Sciences of Hong Kong in 2015.
Robert Harry Purcell
Robert Purcell joined the U.S. Epidemic Intelligence Service in 1963, where he investigated respiratory viruses and mycoplasma. He then moved to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, where he rose to chief of the hepatitis viruses section of the Laboratory of Infectious Disease, and co-chief of the Laboratory of Infectious Disease with Brian R. Murphy. He retired from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 2013.
Purcell was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1988. In 1998, he was granted the King Faisal Prize along with John L. Gerin for "Control of Communicable Diseases".
Robert Purcell is known for his extensive work on hepatitis viruses. In 1972, he was involved in the group that developed the first animal model for hepatitis B. In 1973, Purcell, Albert Kapikian, and Stephen Feinstone discovered and characterized hepatitis A virus. In 1978, Purcell showed that hepatitis C virus is transmissible through blood, and that it remains in the body for life. In the early 1980s, Purcell's group discovered a fourth hepatitis virus, hepatitis D virus. In the 1990s, they discovered Hepatitis E virus. Purcell also helped to develop the first licensed vaccine against hepatitis A virus, and was also involved in developing a vaccine against hepatitis B and D viruses, and a vaccine candidate for protection from hepatitis E virus.
The same team who co-identified the Hepatitis A virus (HAV) developed the first assays that could measure the virus antigen and antibody, and using those assays, the group along with Harvey J. Alter demonstrated through the serologic exclusion of Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B that a third, previously unrecognised form of viral hepatitis existed, originally named non-A, non-B hepatitis (NANBH). Michael Houghton's laboratory at Chiron Corporation ultimately identified the agent associated with NANBH, now known as Hepatitis C, in 1989.
Harvey J. Alter
Dr. Alter earned his medical degree at the University of Rochester Medical School, and trained in internal medicine at Strong Memorial Hospital and at the University Hospitals of Seattle. In 1961, he came to the National Institutes of Health as a clinical associate. He then spent several years with Georgetown University, returning to NIH in 1969 to join the Clinical Center's Department of Transfusion Medicine as a senior investigator, becoming Chief of the Clinical Studies and Associate Director of Research in the Department of Transfusion Medicine at the NIH Clinical Center. In 2000, Alter was awarded the prestigious Clinical Lasker Award. In 2002, he became the first Clinical Center scientist elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and in that same year he was elected to the Institute of Medicine. Only a small number of scientists nationally are elected to both of these scientific societies.
Dr. Alter has won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his contributions to the discovery of the hepatitis C virus. Dr. Alter is a Senior Scholar at the NIH Clinical Center's Department of Transfusion Medicine and shares the award with Michael Houghton, Ph.D., University of Alberta, Canada, and Charles M. Rice, Ph.D., Rockefeller University, New York City.
Benefits and conditions
All successful applicants will receive travel, accommodation and complementary registration to the congress, and a one-year membership of ISBT, if not already a member. ISBT will arrange an awards lunch at the congress for all travel fellowship awardees, where certificates will be presented by the ISBT President.
Successful applicants will be expected to write a brief report on the learning points taken back to their laboratory/clinic according to a template provided. They may also be requested to submit a short report to Transfusion Today (ISBT’s quarterly on-line magazine), and/or a video clip for ISBT social media.
Vox Sanguinis Best Paper Prize
The Vox Sanguinis Best Paper Prize is a scientific award for the best original paper that has been published in ISBT’s journal Vox Sanguinis in the previous calendar year. The editors of Vox Sanguinis will compile a list of papers that qualify for this Prize. The value of the prize is €5000 and is granted by the Standing Committee on Vox Sanguinis and the Editorial Board.
Vox Sanguinis Best Paper Prize Winners
