Aurélie Cobat, a post-doctoral fellow at McGill’s Centre for the Study of Host Resistance in the Faculty of Medicine, is one of five health science researchers to receive a high-profile Le Monde Award for University Research. The annual prize, handed out by the French daily, is in recognition of Cobat’s doctoral thesis on the human genetics of tuberculosis (TB). As a laureate, Cobat wrote an article on her work (“Does an anti-tuberculosis gene exist?”) that appeared in the Nov. 3 edition of Le Monde in a supplement about the prizes.
Launched in 1997, the Le Monde Award for University Research highlights the work of young Francophone researchers who are likely to influence the scientific, economic, social and/or artistic milieus.
Cobat made news earlier this year when she was awarded a Banting Fellowship for her postdoctoral work on the identification of a new set of targets for clinical and public health interventions for TB. Specifically, her work is aimed at revealing the molecular identity of the genetic factors that control anti-mycobacteria immunity and resistance to TB infection. She works under the supervision of Dr. Erwin Schurr, also at the McGill Centre for the Study of Host Resistance and researcher at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI MUHC).