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On June 6, 2018, Dr. Volodymyr V. Shvadchak from IOCB Prague received Otto Wicherle Award, which is given annually by the Czech Academy of Sciences to stimulate and encourage outstanding young scientists, not older than 35, for their remarkable contributions to the advancement of scientific knowledge in their field of research.

Volodymyr is a member of Dmytro Yushchenko Group focusing on chemical biology, where he conducts research of amyloidogenic proteins. His focus is on the investigation of the α-synuclein misfolding mechanism and design of inhibitors suppressing amyloid fibril formation during Parkinson’s disease. [V. V. Shvadchak et al., Angewandte Chemie International Edition 57 (20): 5690-5694, 2018].

Volodymyr started his scientific career as an organic chemist. During his Ph.D. at Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Strasbourg he worked on the development of fluorescent probes for peptide interactions and gradually shifted his research interest towards an investigation of HIV-related peptides. He started to work in the field of biophysics of amyloidogenic protein α-synuclein in 2009 during his first postdoctoral training in the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. There he investigated its membrane binding and found the dependence of its conformation on the protein density on model membranes. Then he moved to the Netherlands to continue his research on α-synuclein focusing on the mechanisms of protein misfolding and fibrillization. During his stay at the AMOLF institute, Volodymyr found the mechanism of autocatalytic reaction acceleration during the α-synuclein fibril formation and did a quantitative description of the process kinetics.