László Nagy received the Szent-Györgyi Talents Award this year for his outstanding contributions to fungal genomics.

Dec 17, 2020 | News

The Szent-Györgyi Talents Award was established by the Foundation for the Future of Biomedical Sciences in Szeged in 2013. This honor is one of the most prestigious awards in Szeged and is given to researchers who carry out outstanding scientific work in Szeged. This year, László Nagy, the leader of the Lendület Laboratory of Fungal Genomics and Evolution, Institute of Biochemistry, BRC, received the prize for their publication on the evolutionary origins of fungal multicellularity  This article was published in Nature Communications journal in 2019. László Nagy and his research group study fungi by combining evolution biology, genetics and comparative genomics methods. Multicellular growth is key to the many socially and economically significant abilities of fungi, for example in the field of animal and plant pathogens or various industrial applications. This trait allows fungi to degrade the highly recalcitrant plant materials (e.g. lignin, lignocellulose) and make them useful in the biofuel production. The award ceremony is organized every spring at the Meeting of Nobel Laureates and Talented Students. In 2020 the 2-day event was delayed to December and happened in online form.

Photo credit: Szeged Scientists Academy

The video of the award ceremony is available at this link: https://youtu.be/QxOcyQ_tfKE