PhD-student Miriam Peeters has won the first prize in an international competition for oral communications at the Purines 2010 congress in Tarragona, Spain. For this competition, 45 young investigators from all over the world were selected to present their research.

Annelien Zweemer is one of the few candidates selected from over 20,000 young scientists world-wide to join the 60th Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany. The KNAW (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences), impressed by Annelien’s CV, recently chose her to represent the Netherlands.

Laura Heitman was selected from 30 Dutch nominations for the international DSM Science & Technology Awards 2010, which celebrated its 25th anniversary this year. The DSM awards consist of a first, second and third prize and a group of six fourth prize winners. Heitman received the fourth prize, consisting of an ‘Honorable Mention’ and prize of €1250.

Dong Guo has won the poster prize during the PhD poster presentation session at the LACDR spring symposium, April 13th 2010. The poster is entitled: “Drug-target residence time-A case for adenosine A2A receptor”.

Gerard van Westen was elected as the 2010 Leiden winner of the annual PhD Competition at the LACDR Spring Symposium, April 13th, with his oral presentation: "Dynamic Analysis of Crystal Structures" From Snapshots and Movies to Drugs. Accordingly, he will represent Leiden University at the national competition held during the FIGON Dutch Medicines Days 2010 in October.

Andreas Bender, Assistant Professor in the Medicinal Chemistry Division, is the recipient of the "EFMC Prize for Young Medicinal Chemist in Academia" in 2010. The prize was established by the European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry (EFMC) to acknowledge and recognize an outstanding young medicinal chemist (up to 35 years of age) working in academia within Europe.

The GlaxoSmithKline Young Investigator's Award consists of a memento and a prize (currently £500) for the best oral communication presented in the basic pharmacology section at the BPS 2009 Winter Meeting in London.

Title of the presentation was: "Allosteric modulation of ‘reproductive’ GPCRs – A case for the human luteinizing hormone receptor".

Dr. Laura Heitman of the Division of Medicinal Chemistry Leiden is this year's winner of the C.J. Kok People’s Choice Award and was named Discoverer of the Year 2009!

Out of eight contestants, Miriam Peeters won the national PhD student competition with an oral presentation of her work. The event was held at the Dutch Medicines Days (October 12-14, 2009).

Miriam Peeters was elected as the 2009 Leiden winner of the annual PhD Competition at the LACDR Spring Symposium, May 7^th, with her oral presentation: ‘An essential role for the first extracellular loop in activating the adenosine A_2B receptor.’

Kai Ye was nominated and elected “Discoverer of the Year 2008” by the C.J. Kok-jury of the Faculty of Science for his thesis entitled “Novel algorithms for protein sequence analysis”. During a festive ceremony early January 2009 the University’s Vice-Chancelor read the jury report and bestowed on Kai a diploma and a check of 2000 Euro.

Laura Heitman has won two first prizes at the Dutch Medicines Days 2008. One prize for the best poster during the Royal Dutch Chemical Society meeting with the poster, entitled: "One Receptor, Three Binding Sites - Two site allosteric modulation of the human GnRH receptor".

Rob Lane and Ad IJzerman contributed to the crystal structure elucidation of the adenosine A_2A receptor. They collaborated with the Stevens lab at the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, CA. Surprisingly, the binding site of the ligand co-crystallized in the receptor is very different from what was expected.

Laura Heitman was elected as the 2008 Leiden winner of the annual PhD Competition at the LACDR Spring Symposium, May 19^th, with her oral presentation: ‘False Positives in a Reporter Gene Assay: Identification and Synthesis of Competitive Inhibitors of Firefly Luciferase.’ Accordingly, she will represent Leiden University at the national competition held during the F

Kai Ye was awarded the 2007 outstanding-students-abroad Award established by the Chinese government for his research achievements in bioinformatics. This award is open for competition for Chinese PhD students abroad from all disciplines. He was selected one among only seven in The Netherlands, with 300 in total from all over the world for the year 2007.

Laura Heitman had the best poster abstract submitted at the 6^th Annual Congress: ‘G Protein-Coupled Receptors in Drug Discovery’, Berlin, Germany, and was invited for an oral presentation on March 12, 2008. The title of her winning contribution was “One Receptor, Three Binding Sites - Two site allosteric modulation of the human GnRH receptor”.

Ad IJzerman was awarded the Utrecht Award for Excellence in Pharmaceutical Research 2007 in, as it was stated, “recognition of his achievements, dedication and ongoing commitment”. The award, an artwork made by a famous silversmith in the Netherlands, and a diploma were handed to Ad during a festive ceremony at Utrecht University on June 13, 2007.

Lisa Chang was honoured with the 2005/2006 biannual Dutch Award for the best thesis in medicinal chemistry. Her work on “supercaffeines” was judged best by a jury consisting of scientists from both academia and industry. On March 2 the prize (a certificate and € 2000) was presented at the national spring symposium of the Section of Medicinal Chemistry.

Eric-Wubbo Lameijer's research on co-occurrence of molecular fragments in huge chemical databases, in which he identified “chemical clichés”, was immediately cherry-picked by Chemistry World. This publication of the Royal Society of Chemistry is a guide to cutting edge research, international business news and government policy, and is read by over 45,000 people.