The Pessoa Prize 2010 was awarded to Professor Maria do Carmo Fonseca (the first woman to receive the prestigious Science DuPont Prize) on 17 December.  This prize was granted for her input, in 2010, with five articles published in highly prestigious international journals, on “identification of mechanisms of message transmission inside cells”, and for contributing to a “better understanding of the diseases caused by nature’s errors affecting that process”.
According to Carmo-Fonseca “This is a trust vote on the science work that is being undertaken in Portugal. I am one of the many Portuguese scientists who trained abroad and chose to return to carry out research in Portugal”, she told Lusa News Agency this morning.

The scientist’s research, who is a full professor and director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon, focuses on the “study of the genome in action, by means of visualizing biological phenomena, and resorting to extremely microscopic sophisticated techniques”.
The announcement was made through a communiqué to editorials, after the winner was selected by a panel. The Pessoa Prize panel was headed by Francisco Pinto Balsemão and included Fernando Faria de Oliveira, vice-president, Alexandre Pomar, António Barreto, Clara Ferreira Alves, Diogo Lucena, Eduardo Souto Moura, José Fraústo da Silva, João Lobo Antunes, José Luís Porfírio, Maria de Sousa, Mário Soares, Miguel Veiga, Rui Baião and Rui Vieira Nery. The prize is promoted by the weekly paper Expresso and sponsored by Bank Caixa Geral de Depósitos.

The Pessoa Prize is awarded annually to “a Portuguese citizen who, during that period, and as a result of a previous activity, has contributed significantly and innovatively to the artistic, literary or scientific life of the country”.