Pictured above left to right:
BGU President Prof. Rivka Carmi, Teva President of Global R&D and Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Michael Hayden, Prof. Ashraf Brik, Teva President and CEO Dr. Jeremy Levin (Credit: Perry Mandelbaum)
Prof. Ashraf Brik, a member of the Department of Chemistry and the Edmond J. Safra Center for the Design and Engineering of Functional Biopolymers has been awarded the 2012 Teva Award for Excellence in Memory of Eli Hurvitz. The Award was founded to underscore Mr. Hurvitz’s extraordinary contribution to society and Teva’s commitment to the cultivation of excellence in areas it perceives as essential to the thriving of the state of Israel: education, science and culture. Hurvitz was former Chairman of the company, led Teva for 57 years and served as its Chief Executive Officer for more than 25 years.
The Teva Award is awarded each year for outstanding achievements that contribute to the flourishing of the State of Israel and is presented to individuals and organizations that have made extraordinary contributions through their activities in science, art and education. The ceremony took place earlier this week at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in the presence of President Shimon Peres.
The Award for 2012 was split between winning recipients Prof. Ashraf Brik from BGU and Prof. Dan S. Tawfik from the Weizmann Institute of Science. This year’s Award Committee comprised of Prof. Aaron Ciechanover, Chairman, Prof. Raphael Meshulam and Prof. David Milstein, and remarked, “The two Award winners represent two generations of Israeli science excellence. As global leaders in their fields, they have made decisive contributions to positioning Israel at the forefront of research in biochemistry worldwide. In addition, both are outstanding examples of scientific and personal excellence. Prof. Ashraf Brik is awarded the prize for innovative and groundbreaking research Prof. Brik is a promising young scholar who has quickly established a worldwide reputation in the field of biochemistry. His laboratory develops novel methods to synthesize homogenous proteins for a variety of structural and functional studies. Prof. Brik’s research is both innovative and groundbreaking, and has become a focus of global interest. His work has the potential to lead to significant new contributions in research.”
Prof. Brik was born in 1973 in Israel. In 1996, he completed his undergraduate studies in Chemistry at BGU. He attended the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology for his M.Sc. and became interested in organic synthesis, working with Dr. Nizar Haddad on the total synthesis of Borrelidin, a natural antibiotic macrolide. After completing his M.Sc. in 1998, he moved to The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in California where he worked with Professor Ehud Keinan and Professor Philip Dawson on a joint program between the Technion and TSRI. During his Ph.D. (1998-2001), he developed chemical method to facilitate the synthesis of proteins and used the developed tools to study the mechanism of the 4-Oxalocrotonate Tautomerase and to alter its activity from tautomerase to decarboxylase.
In 2002, he started a postdoctoral position with Professor Chi-Huey Wong at TSRI, working in the drug discovery area where he developed a high throughput approach named microtiter plate based chemistry and in situ screening for the discovery of potent inhibitors against HIV protease, beta-aryl sulfotransferase, and SARS human corona virus protease. In 2004, he was promoted to a Sr. Research Associate. He also contributed to the development of new method to prepare homogenous glycoproteins for biological studies.
In 2007, Prof. Brik returned as a senior lecturer in BGU's Department of Chemistry and was promoted to Associate Professor in March 2011 and to the rank of a Full Professor in March 2012. His current research mainly focuses on the total chemical synthesis of post-translationally modified proteins for biological studies. In particular, he made outstanding contribution and discoveries to the chemical synthesis of ubiquitin bioconjugates to study the ubiquitination signal at the molecular level.
He is the recipient of many grants and awards including from the Wolfson Foundation, the Israel Science Foundation, the Edmund Safra Foundation, Marie Curie International Re-Integration Grants, Ma’of Fellowship, German Israel Foundation (GIF), United State-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF) and the Human Frontier of Science Program (HFSP). He has also been named in BGU's Dean's Honors List of the Faculty of Natural Sciences as Excellent Researcher.. He is the recipient of the 2011 Israel Chemical Society prize for Outstanding Young Chemist, the 2012 Toronto prize and the Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award - Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry for 2013.
