Yehezkel Ben-Ari, winner of the 2009 INSERM Grand Prix

Yehezkel Ben-Ari, winner of the 2009 Inserm Grand Prix.

Every year since 2000, Inserm has affirmed its commitment to paying tribute to outstanding
work performed in its laboratories and departments. By honouring talents, Inserm intends to
demonstrate the diversity and wealth of activities involved in today's biological, medical and
health research, and the creativity and passion of the men and women who carry out and
drive this research each day. The Inserm 2009 prize-giving ceremony will take place on 17
December.

Inserm Grand Prix

This prize pays tribute to French scientific researchers whose work has enabled outstanding
progress to be made in our knowledge of human physiology, therapeutics and more widely,
the field of health.

This year, it has been awarded to Yehezkel
Ben-Ari, founder and honorary director of
Inserm Mediterranean Institute of Neurobiology
(Inmed) in Marseilles. Born in Cairo in 1943,
Yehezkel Ben-Ari was educated in Israel, before
settling in France in 1966. Throughout his
career, he has worked in different French
laboratories with a few periods abroad (England,
Norway, Canada). From 1986, he directed unit
29 "Neurobiology and physiopathology of
development", at Cochin-Port-Royal hospital. In
1999, he moved with all his unit's researchers,
engineers and administrative staff to build and
set up, with the assistance of Inserm, Inmed on
the Marseilles-Luminy site.

This institute comprises a neurology company incubator, a summer school for house
physicians (Hippocrates school), an art gallery and the "All researchers" association militantly
in favour of an experimental approach to sciences.

A member of many scientific bodies and learned societies, Yehezkel Ben-Ari, with his
employees, has made numerous important discoveries in many fields, in particular brain
maturation, epilepsy and stroke. He has already received the American Epilepsy Society
Award for his work in 2000. Today, we pay tribute to his whole career by awarding him the
2009 Inserm Grand Prix.

© Brieuc Canet/Inserm

© Patrice Latron/Inserm

The Prix d'Honneur and International Prize

These pay tribute to the career and work of particularly eminent scientists working with
INSERM and in the international community.

The 2009 winner of the Prix d'Honneur, Nicole
Le Douarin, has been a member of the
Academy of Science since 1982. Agrégé in
natural sciences, she began her professional life
as a high school teacher. At the age of 28, the
future College de France professor (she was
elected in 1988) decided to take up her studies
again and prepare a PhD. She subsequently
devoted the rest of her career to embryology
research. Today aged 79, Nicole Le Douarin
continues her research in the "Development,
evolution, plasticity of the nervous system"
laboratory at Gif-sur-Yvette.

The 2009 winner of the International Prize,
Nora D. Volkow has directed the National
Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in the USA since
2003. Pioneer in the use of the brain imaging to
study the toxic effects of drugs and their
addictives properties, she has spent most of
here career in the Energy Department at
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton,
New York. She is one of the world's leading
specialists in the brain mechanisms of addiction.
This great granddaughter of Leon Trotski
"militates" for a change in society's attitude to
the victims of addictions and encourages
research on the treatment of addiction.

Research prizes

These prizes are awarded to researchers, teacher/researchers and clinician/ researchers
whose work has particularly marked the field of fundamental, clinical and therapeutic
research, and research into public health.

2009 prize-winners: Pierre Brousset and Stanislas Lyonnet

• Pierre Brousset is a hospital physician and researcher in the "Oncogenesis,
  signalling and therapeutic innovation" department of Inserm unit 563, at Purpan
  Hospital in Toulouse.
• Stanislas Lyonnet is hospital physician and researcher in Inserm unit 781 "Genetics
  and epigenetic of metabolic, neurosensory and developmental diseases", at Necker-
  Children's' Hospital in Paris.

Innovation prizes

These awards are given to engineers, administrative and technical staff for original
achievements performed in support of research work.

2009 prize-winners: Brigitte Bazin and Jean-Marie Garnier.

• Brigitte Bazin is Inserm physician with a secondary posting as head of the "Research
  in developing countries" department of the French AIDS and viral hepatitis research
  Agency (ANRS).
• Jean-Marie Garnier is Inserm research engineer in unit 964, at the Institute of
  genetics and molecular and cell biology (IGBMC).

These individual distinctions also acknowledge the know-how, involvement and tenacity of
whole teams. Through the traces left by researchers and engineers, they too play a part in
the history of knowledge. These prizes are emblematic of Inserm's excellence and
demonstrate the Institute's significant contribution to advances in the understanding of life
and research into practical means for the screening, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of
all human diseases. They provide proof that each year these illnesses are receding and
individual quality of life and population health are improving.

Source: INSERM (Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale)