About the Award
The Selman A. Waksman Award recognizes a major advance in the field of microbiology and is presented with a $20,000 prize.
Rotem Sorek, Weizmann Institute of Science, will receive the 2025 Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology.
Sorek’s seminal studies of bacterial immune systems has dramatically expanded our knowledge of the mechanisms used by bacteria to protect against viruses and explained how key components in the human innate immune system evolved.
Sorek’s work combines computational genomics with microbiology, genetics, and biochemistry methods to study how phages attack bacteria and examine how bacteria defend themselves against such attacks. His work has revealed unexpected evolutionary connections between bacterial and eukaryotic immunity and shed light on the evolution of central components in the cell-autonomous innate immune system of humans.
Sorek’s lab has also discovered that phages can use small-molecule communication to coordinate their infection dynamics, showing for the first time that viruses can communicate.
Sorek will be honored in a ceremony on Sunday, April 27 during the National Academy of Sciences’ 162nd annual meeting. The ceremony will be livestreamed.
Award History
The Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology was established by the Waksman Foundation for Microbiology in honor of the Jewish Ukrainian inventor, Nobel Prize laureate, biochemist, and microbiologist whose research into the decomposition of organisms that live in soil enabled the discovery of streptomycin and several other antibiotics. The award was first presented in 1968 to Jack L. Strominger for his elegant studies on the biosynthesis of the bacterial cell wall and the mode of action of antibiotics.
Previous recipients of the Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology continue to achieve outstanding advancements in their fields. Seven recipients have been honored with a National Medal of Science (Stadtman, 1979; Yanofsky, 2003; Wood, 1989; Woese, 2000; Falkow, 2016; Shapiro, 2011), four recipients have received a Lasker Award (Strominger, 1995; Yanofsky, 1971; Dulbecco, 1964; Falkow, 2008), and one recipient has received a Nobel Prize in Medicine (Dulbecco, 1975).
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