Prize recipient 2024 | Biochemist Jesper Qualmann Svejstrup

Jesper Qualmann Svejstrup is an internationally renowned scientist who has made groundbreaking discoveries in fundamental biomedical research. He is a professor and center director at Copenhagen University, vice-president for the European Research Council (ERC), and Honorary Skou Professor at Aarhus University. He studies the molecular mechanisms that govern gene expression and genome stability in our cells, areas he has pioneered and transformed through his original and daring research.    

Jesper Qualmann Svejstrup’s research has uncovered fundamental principles of how our DNA is transcribed and repaired. Transcription of genes underpins all life; it is the process that translates the codes in our DNA into the messenger molecules that make the enzymes and proteins needed to make a functional cell. Jesper Qualmann Svejstrup’s work has transformed our understanding of transcriptional regulation and how it is integrated with repair of DNA lesions and connected to human disease. He has discovered that cells constantly suffer transcriptional stress and uncovered the molecular players that mitigate this challenge to produce functional proteins and avoid genome instability that can lead to cancer. He has also made seminal contributions to understand how our cells repair DNA damage from UV irradiation. His research uncovered a ‘last resort’ molecular mechanism that ensures DNA repair in transcribed genes when other attempts have failed. More recently, he provided impressive results outlining the global transcription response to UV irradiation and fascinating mechanisms that underlie first shutdown and then restart of transcription once the DNA damage burden is lessened. This revealed important new information about the neurological disorder Cockayne Syndrome and how transcriptional defects might explain many of the symptoms, providing new hopes for treatment. 

As a true pioneer, Jesper Qualmann Svejstrup has followed his own unique line of research and throughout his impressive research career persistently pursued how cells regulate transcription and how this process overcomes obstacles and contends with stress. His work has brought together diverse areas of cell biology, and his results are notable for their originality, high quality and depth. He is unique in his ability to innovate his research approach, he first championed reconstitution biochemistry, genetics and molecular cell biology and in more recent years added cutting-edge new ‘omics’ techniques to continue to break new ground in the forefront of his field. 

Jesper Qualmann Svejstrup has excelled on the international research scene, leading research groups at the famous Clare Hall Laboratories for almost 20 years and later at Francis Crick Institute in London. He returned to Denmark in 2020, bringing back his expertise to establish a Center of Excellence in Gene Expression at University of Copenhagen. Throughout his career, Jesper Qualmann Svejstrup has been an inspiring supervisor and mentor for PhD students and postdocs, many of whom now head their own laboratories around the world. 

Jesper Qualmann Svejstrup is in all aspects a beacon of scientific excellence and a role model for young ambitious scientist who want to follow their passion and pursue their ideas.