Astassi prize
The School of Chemistry gratefully acknowledges the legacy of Professor Zouhair Atassi, whose generosity established the Atassi Prizes, commemorated each year through a dedicated prize symposium.
The M. Zouhair Atassi Lecture helps bring bright minds in the molecular sciences from across the globe to Birmingham to share their research and inspire and enthuse future generations of researchers.
The M. Zouhair Atassi Award and the M. Zouhair Atassi Student Awards respectively, recognise outstanding, original, innovative contributions in biochemistry, chemical biology or molecular sciences.
Previous awards featured
2025 Atassi Research Paper Prize Winner – Dr Arianna Brandolese of the Dove Group : Flowing Toward Circularity: On Demand, Renewable Photopolymer Resins for Sustainable Additive Manufacturing.
2025 Atassi Thesis Prize Winner – Dr James Reed of the Allan Group: Partial Interzeolite Transformation (POZT): a basic treatment of a natural zeolites for enhanced remediation nuclear effluent.
2024 Atassi Prize Lecturer - Professor Anna Mapp of the University of Michigan – Lessons from Nature: a general strategy for drugging transcription factor complexes.
2024 Atassi Research Paper Prize Winner - Tianlai Xia of the O’Reilly Group – Tuning the Functionality of Self-Assembled 2D Platelets in the Third Dimension.
2024 Atassi Thesis Prize Winner - Dr Giulia Molinaro of the Peacock/Britton Groups – Artificial metallopeptides as MRI contrast agents.
2023 Atassi Research Paper Prize Winner - Dr Phoebe Allan and her group for their work on reclamation and reuse of graphite from electric vehicle lithium-ion battery anodes via water delamination.
2023 Atassi Thesis Prize Winner - Dr Lizzie Driscoll, whose work on novel electrode materials and educational resources for Li/Na ion batteries led to the discovery of several new and highly promising battery materials.
2023 Atassi Prize Lecturer - Prof Heather Maynard from UCLA.
2022 Atassi Research Paper Prize Winner – Dr Nick Pearce of the Champness group - Selective photoinduced charge separation in perylenediimide-pillar[5]arene rotaxanes.
2022 Atassi PhD Thesis Prize - Dr Connor Stubbs – Outstanding research on the development of a new reversible photochemically-cured resin system derived from renewable resources.
Inaugural
2021 Atassi Research Paper Prize Winner - Lazaros Melidis and co-workers - a new approach to anti-viral drug discovery by the targeting of RNA.