Prix Schläfli
The Prix Schläfli rewards the best Swiss PhDs in the natural sciences. It is one of the oldest prizes in Switzerland. Since the first awarding in 1866, over hundred young talents in different natural science disciplines have been distinguished.
The prize has the following aims:
- Promote young talents (promotion of young scientists and support of academic excellence) in the different natural science disciplines
- Highlight the importance of young scientists in the Swiss research landscape
All the information about the Prix Schläfli can be found on the SCNAT webpage Prix Schlafli.
Hereafter, the chemists who won the Prix Schläfli Chemistry recently:

Her work could pave the way for new forms of cancer screening: Claudia Aloisi researched a new method for quantifying and determining DNA damage at ETH Zurich. She got the Prix Schläfli award in chemistry for this.
Image: ETH Zürich / Nicola Pitaro
The Prix Schläfli, one of the longest-running science prizes in Switzerland (since 1866), is awarded by the Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT) to young scientists for excellent articles resulting from PhDs in each of the following disciplines: Biology, Chemistry, Geosciences and Mathematics.
Image: Caspar Klein
He won medals at international chemistry olympiads even as a teenager. Now Robert Pollice adds to his collection the Prix Schläfli in Chemistry, for researching material properties that are, amongst other things, important in nanomedicine.

When asked about her motivation to study chemistry, Murielle Delley explains that she has always wanted to know how things work. When it came to understanding what was happening around us - everyday science, so to speak - she was more attracted to chemistry than to physics, for example. Well, that was originally the case. Over the years she naturally also turned to more specific, less everyday problems, most recently the surfaces of catalysts.
Image: Bernard DelleyHe is described as a "volcano of scientific ideas" by Eric Bakker, his PhD supervisor at the University of Geneva. Xiaojiang Xie laughs a little when he hears this on the phone in his hometown of Shenzen, to which he returned two years ago. Prior to that, he had been a researcher for five years in Geneva and Paris, where he launched a career that would make the world sit up and take notice.
Image: Xiaojiang Xie