Iva Tolić awarded the ‘Austrian Nobel’ for science

The Austrian Academy of Sciences has awarded Iva Tolić, a scientist from the Ruđer Bošković Institute (IRB), the Ignaz L. Lieben Prize for 2017 for her outstanding scientific achievements in the field of molecular cell biology, particularly in the research of cellular microtubules.

As announced by the IRB, the prestigious award, which is also considered the Austrian Nobel, was granted to her for scientific discoveries made within the ERC project “A new class of microtubules in the mitotic spindle that generate forces on kinetochores,” under which a team of scientists led by Prof. Tolić has achieved completely new scientific insights that are extremely important for the process of cell division, changing previous understandings in this field.

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“I am extremely honored that the Austrian Academy of Sciences has decided to award me this prestigious prize, and it is certainly an award for my entire team without whom it would not have been possible to achieve such exciting scientific results. I am particularly pleased with the fact that we have already achieved outstanding results within the ERC project worth over two million euros, which is currently halfway through, and I am very optimistic regarding the continuation of research that shows we can expect new interesting insights in this field in the future,” said Iva Tolić.

The award committee justified its choice by stating that Prof. Tolić has significantly contributed to the understanding of the cell division process in the human body through her scientific work. In her research, she described for the first time previously unknown factors that play an important role in cell division. In doing so, she managed to discover a new type of microtubules that connect protein complexes on chromosomes like bridges and create forces that separate chromosomes from the mother cell into two daughter cells, and her research could be important for discovering new therapies for cancer diseases caused by errors in the regulation of cell division.

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The Ignaz L. Lieben Prize is awarded each year to scientists who have worked in countries including Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Slovenia over the past three years for exceptional scientific achievements in the field of molecular biology, chemistry, or physics, as stated in the announcement.

Prof. Dr. Iva Tolić obtained her PhD in 2002 at the University of Zagreb, worked at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and at the University of Florence. Since 2004, she has been the head of a research group at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, and since 2014, she has been the head of a research group and scientific advisor at the Ruđer Bošković Institute. In 2015, she received a project from the European Research Council (ERC), and she has also received many awards including the State Award for Science, the Order of Danica Hrvatska with the image of Ruđer Bošković, the “Influential Croatian Women” award, and the medal and award from the Association of European Biophysical Societies.