Roksana Pirzgalska, PhD student from the Obesity group of the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC), is the winner of the Pulido Valente 2016 Award for the discovery that adipose tissue is innervated and that the direct activation of these neurons burns fat. The prize of € 10,000 is awarded annually by the Professor Francisco Pulido Valente Foundation and the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia to the best published article in a field of Biomedical Sciences by a researcher with less than 35 years. In 2016, the selected area was Neurosciences.

The selected research paper was developed in Ana Domingos’ laboratory and originally published in the scientific journal Cell, an article in which the PhD student is the first author. Roksana Pirzgalska says “it is very gratifying when our work is noticed and appreciated. I plan to use this award to attend international conferences where I can discuss my work with the broader scientific community.”