The Emil Fischer Award

The Emil Fischer Carbohydrate Award has been established in 2008 by the European Carbohydrate Organization in order to honor active carbohydrate scientists distinguished with contributions of excellence.

2025

For the first time ever, the Emil Fischer Prize was awarded to two outstanding scientists: Prof. Sabine Flitsch and Prof. M. Carmen Galan!

In recognition of her pioneer glycoscience research at the intersection of glycobiology and enzymology and her significant contributions in developing new approaches for high-resolution glycan analysis using mass spectrometry.

read Prof. Sabine Flitsch bio

Prof. Sabine Flitsch graduated from University of Münster in Germany in 1982 with a first class Diploma in Chemistry. She received a Michael Wills scholarship to study for a D. Phil at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Sir Jack E. Baldwin. She then took up a DAAD Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to work with Professor H. Gobind Khorana until 1988 before returning to Oxford to take up a lectureship in Organic Chemistry for 6 years.

After joining the University of Edinburgh in 1995, Prof. Sabine Flitsch was awarded the Zeneca Research Award in 1996 and the Glaxo Wellcome Award for Innovative Chemistry in 1997. She was also a BBSRC Research Development Fellow 2001-2004. Prof. Sabine Flitsch was awarded the Wolfson Merit Award by the Royal Society (2007-2012) and RSC Interdisciplinary Prize 2014 for her significant contributions in biological chemistry, in particular carbohydrate chemistry and glycobiology.

In October 2004 Prof. Sabine Flitsch moved to a Chair in Chemical Biology at the University of Manchester in the Department of Chemistry.

Carmen Galan photo — **Carmen GALAN**
University of Bristol, UK

In recognition of her creative and pioneer contributions that explore the applications of glycochemistry in emerging fields at the interface of chemistry, biology, and materials science.

read Prof. M. Carmen Galan bio

Prof. M. Carmen Galan received her B.S. degree in chemistry from Universidad de Alicante, Spain. She was awarded a Socrates-Erasmus grant to pursue an MPhil in Pure and Applied Chemistry at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, under the supervision of Prof. P.J. Hall and Dr. L.E.A. Berlouis. Prof. M. Carmen Galan received her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center at The University of Georgia, USA, under the supervision of Prof. Geert-Jan Boons, where she carried out research in the field of carbohydrates. She then moved to California to pursue post-doctoral research with Prof. Chi-Huey Wong at The Scripps Research Institute. After that, she continued her post-doctoral training at Massachussetts Institute of Technology with Prof. Sarah O’Connor.

Prof. M. Carmen Galan returned to the UK in October 2006 on a lecturership in the School of Chemistry. In 2008 she became a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin fellow, from 2012-2017 she held a five-year EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellowship and a an ERC consolidator award (2015-2020). She currently holds the position of Professor in the School of Chemistry of the University of Bristol.

Previous Emil Fischer Award winners

2023

Jeroen Codée
Leiden University, The Netherlands
In recognition of his exceptional accomplishments and dedication to bio-organic chemistry in the field of Glycosciences.

2021

Antonio Molinaro
University of Napoli Federico II, Italy
In recognition of his outstanding accomplishments toward the structural elucidation of complex carbohydrates from microbial world, in particular, in the study of structure and role of cell wall of microorganisms in the elicitation of innate immune response in plants and mammals.

2019

Carme Rovira
University of Barcelona, Spain
In recognition of her outstanding accomplishments to unravel the mode of action of carbohydrate processing enzymes in atomic detail using ground breaking computational techniques

2017

Carlo Unverzagt
University of Bayreuth, Germany
In recognition of his outstanding accomplishments in the chemical and enzymatic synthesis of N-glycans and glycoproteins.

2015

Jean-Paul Latgé
Institut Pasteur, Paris, France
In recognition of his outstanding accomplishments in fundamental and clinical aspects of the glycobiology of the human opportunistic fungal pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus.

2013

Antoni Planas
Institut Quimic de Sarria, Universitat Ramon Llull, Barcelona, Spain
In recognition of his outstanding accomplishments to unravel the mechanisms of glycosidases, glycosyltransferases, and other auxiliary enzymes involved in the fine decoration of oligosaccharides, polysaccharides and glycoconjugates.

2011

David Crich
Department of Chemistry, Wayne State University, USA
In recognition of his outstanding accomplishments in vital areas of glycochemistry

2009

Richard R. Schmidt
University of Konstanz, Germany
In recognition of his outstanding accomplishments in the field of the glycosylation reaction and oligosaccharide synthesis.