Prof Tom Cotter of University College Cork has won the 1999 Boyle Medal, awarded in recognition of excellence in scientific research.
It comes with a £30,000 bursary which will be used to fund the costs of a doctoral student of his choice. Prof Cotter is an academic researcher from UCC department of biochemistry, which he heads. His award is for work on the natural and necessary process of programmed cell death, known as apoptosis.
The bursary is jointly funded by the Royal Dublin Society and by The Irish Times. The medal was devised by the RDS and was first presented 100 years ago to mark "scientific research of exceptional merit carried out in Ireland".
It has been presented 30 times to some of Ireland's greatest thinkers since the first award in 1899, and from this relaunch of the Boyle Medal by the RDS and The Irish Times it will now be presented every two years, alternating between an Irish-based researcher and an Irish researcher working abroad.
Last night at the medal presentation, the RDS president, Col Bill Ringrose, said there was a pressing need to increase the interest of young people in science; to heighten public awareness of science and to serve science. In partnership with The Irish Times, the relaunch would continue to honour research of exceptional merit.
The Irish Times editor, Mr Conor Brady, said the newspaper's partnership with the RDS in promoting science had proved to be a tremendous success. The Irish Times was committed to furthering this, to raising the profile of science and to opening a new vista to its readers.
The three finalists, including Prof Michael Coey and Dr Luke O'Neill, both of Trinity College Dublin, were selected from among some of Ireland's leading researchers. An initial judging panel selected the three, and then a five-member judging panel chaired by Lord Lewis carried out personal interviews with the finalists. He paid tribute to the quality of Prof Cotter's work and that of the other finalists.
The bursary is expected to cover the cost of maintaining a research student over three years of study. Prof Cotter will be expected to select a student and direct his or her research.
Prof Cotter carries out research into a process which has to occur if humans are to remain healthy and grow. Old cells make way for new, and cells no longer required automatically dispose of themselves. Too much apoptosis or too little can lead to illness.
Unnecessary and inappropriate cell death occurs in disorders such as multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease, where important tissues die off and are not replaced quickly enough.
Too much cell growth occurs when cancers develop and tumour cells begin to grow out of control. In this case, apoptosis is blocked and cells lose their ability to die. Much ground-breaking cancer research in recent years has focused on the role of apoptosis.
Prof Cotter and his research team are investigating what takes place within the cell to prompt natural cell death, notably the role of genes which switch on and off in an orderly fashion to destroy the cell. He is attempting to identify the genes responsible and assess how stress can affect cells in the form of exposure to poisons, severe temperature or changes in acidity - by prompting certain genes to express stress proteins; substances which protect the cell and help it survive.
He has reported on how multiple exposure to stress can trigger apoptosis. This could be important in the treatment of cancer using chemotherapy - some cancers become resistant to chemotherapy because their stress proteins protect them, while he has discovered a second stress helps to overcome this resistance.