Winners of BioMed Central Annual Research Awards announced

The winners of BioMed Central's 4th Annual Research Awards were announced at London's Swiss Re Tower last night. The event was attended by shortlisted authors, eminent researchers, publishers, open access advocates and science journalists from around the world.

The awards, now in their fourth year, acknowledge excellence in research that has been made universally accessible by open access publication. These awards were particularly special this year as BioMed Central also celebrates its 10th anniversary.

The two main awards, the Biology and Medicine Prizes, recognize groundbreaking biological or medical research published in any of BioMed Central's journals during 2009.

The Medicine and Biology Prizes were won by the following research articles:

Biology Award - Kenta Asahina, California Institute of Technology
A circuit supporting concentration-invariant odor perception in Drosophila
Journal of Biology 2009, 8:9 (26 January 2009)

Medicine Award - Godfrey Woelk, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Translating research into policy: lessons learned from eclampsia treatment and malaria control in three southern African countries
Health Research Policy and Systems 2009, 7:31 (30 December 2009)

This year saw the introduction of a new prize, the BioMed Central Open Data Award, in association with Microsoft Research. This was presented to Yoosook Lee from the School of Veterinary Medicine, UC Davis, for her article 'Ecological and genetic relationships of the Forest-M form among chromosomal and molecular forms of the malaria vector Anopheles gambiae sensu stricto'.

Genome Biology also gave a special award recognising the best article published in the journal during 2009, to mark its 10th anniversary. This was awarded to Ben Langmead, from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, for his research 'Ultrafast and memory-efficient alignment of short DNA sequences to the human genome'.

In the other award categories, the winners are:

Editor of the Year - Kuan-Teh Jeang, Retrovirology

Case Report of the Year - Georgios Labiris, University in Alexandroupolis
Association between isotretinoin use and central retinal vein occlusion in an adolescent with minor predisposition for thrombotic incidents: a case report
Journal of Medical Case Reports 2009, 3:58 (10 February 2009)

Biology Image Library Image of the Year - Heiti Paves
Arabidopsis thaliana flower (6 November 2009)

Biology Image Library Animation of the Year - Leiden University Medical Center
3D-model of the reticulovesicular network of modified ER membranes induced by and implicated in SARS-coronavirus replication (8 September 2009)

Open Access Institute of the Year:
Harvard University
University of Zurich
Chinese Academy of Science

Matthew Cockerill, Managing Director of BioMed Central, said "We are thrilled with the range and high calibre of this year's award nominees and congratulate the winners, along with those shortlisted, on their outstanding research. We would also like to thank our sponsors, Microsoft Research and Pfizer, for their continued support of the research awards."