Marie Curie Excellence Awardees 2004

["Dagmar M. Meyer" <dmeyer@DROPMEmariecurie.org>]

Dear All,

yesterday the winners of the 2004 Marie Curie Excellence Awards have been
announced at a ceremony during the Marie Curie Week that is currently
celebrated in Warsaw. I enclose below a press release by the European
Commission with the names of the awardees. I am personally particularly
happy to see that Gadi Rothenberg is among the prize winners. Gadi has
been an active member of the MCFA for a long time and was one of the UK
National Coordinators when he was a Marie Curie fellow in York.

Congratulations to all five of them!!!

Best regards,
Dagmar

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2004 EU Marie Curie Awards announced: European Excellence in Research
rewarded

The European Commission announced today (November 7) in Warsaw the winners
of the 2004 Marie Curie Awards, with grants of up to EUR 50,000 going to
five outstanding European researchers. The Marie Curie Awards are given in
recognition of the excellence achieved by researchers who have benefited
from EU support schemes and to boost their careers by contributing to
their international exposure. This year's graduates include two Germans,
two Italians and an Israeli. They made scientific breakthroughs on issues
such as the creation of galaxies, the roots of human empathy, quantum
physics, new catalysts and the science of materials.

"The EU has some of the best scientists in the world. We have to recognise
their excellence," said European Research Commissioner Louis Michel. "The
Marie Curie Awards help address this issue by showing how bright European
researchers, who have made the most of our mobility grants by acquiring
and sharing knowledge, can achieve outstanding results."

Fostering excellence

The Awards are part of the opportunities provided by a four-year EUR 1.56
billion programme intended to support the training and mobility of
researchers in Europe, coming from all over the world. Each year, between
one and five prizes are presented to former "Marie Curie" fellows or other
researchers who have benefited from EU funded mobility research
programmes. EU "Marie Curie" actions foster the training, mobility and
career development of researchers. Fellowships are available in any
scientific discipline. They contribute directly to the objectives of the
EU Sixth Research Framework Programme (FP6 2002-2006) and the Lisbon
Strategy - to make Europe the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based
economy in the world by 2010.

The Grand Jury

The 2004 winners were chosen by a six member Grand Jury chaired by
Professor Gerard 't Hooft, Dutch Nobel Prize winner for Physics in 1999.
The project disciplines were in Chemistry, Engineering, Life Sciences,
Mathematics & Information Sciences and Physics. (See annex for further
details)

And the winners are...

The 2004 Marie Curie Award winners are:

Benedetta Ciardi (Italy): for her work on the effect that the radiation of
the first stars had on the different gases in the Universe and on the
process of galaxy formation.

Christian Marc Keysers (Germany): for his research into the neural
processes to uncover how and why people empathise with each other.

Jens Marklof (Germany): for his studies in quantum physics and the
localisation properties of chaotic quantum states.

Gadi Rothenberg (Israel): for searching for new catalysts using a
combination of advanced computational and experimental methods.

Stefano Zapperi (Italy): for his investigations into internal avalanches
and crackling noises in different materials.

Further information about the Marie Curie Excellence Awards may be found
at

http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/fp6/mariecurie-actions/indexhtm_en.html