Schrödinger-Prize for Nick Barton

On December 13, the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) awards the Erwin Schrödinger-Prize 2013 to Nick Barton. The Professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) is thereby honored for his preeminent achievements in the field of evolutionary population genetics. The ÖAW honors Barton as “worldwide leading scientist in this field”. The focus of his work lies on the evolution of populations that are distributed through space and experience natural selection on many genes. His research interests concentrate on hybrid zones, areas in which the distribution of two related populations, which have diverged after geographic isolation, overlap such that they come back into contact and can interbreed. With his research, Nick Barton has significantly contributed to the understanding of how species adapt and split into new species. In recent years, the analysis of interactions between many genes based on genomic data has come into focus in his research.

The Erwin Schrödinger-Prize, endowed with 15’000 Euro, is awarded to scientists who work in Austria and have produced preeminent scientific achievements in the fields represented in the Section for Mathematics and the Natural Sciences in the widest sense.

Barton has been at IST Austria since 2008 and so is the first Professor of the research institute. Amongst others, he was awarded an ERC Grant and the Darwin-Wallace Medal in 2009. In September this year, Barton was honored with the Mendel Medal of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.