Dr. Athan Zovoilis is among the recipients of the 2020 Cozzarelli Prize for his 2020 work published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on the role of SINE RNAs as epigenetic ribozymes. Zovoilis’ work was selected by the PNAS editorial board as the winner under the Biological Sciencescategory. The 2020 awardees will be recognized at a virtual awards ceremony during the National Academies of Science Annual Meeting on April 25.

The annual Cozzarelli Prize acknowledges papers that reflect scientific excellence and originality and was established in 2005 as the Paper of the Year Prize and subsequently renamed in 2007 to honour late PNAS Editor-in-Chief Nicholas R. Cozzarelli.

Dr. Zovoilis is an Assistant Professor at the Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry and member of the Southern Alberta Genome Sciences Centre, The Canadian Centre for Behavioral Neuroscience and the Alberta RNA Research and Training Institute. Dr. Zovoilis’ recognized research on SINE RNAs has been the follow up of his previous work published  in the journal Cell that first revealed the processing of this novel class of biomolecules and their role in regulation of cellular response to stress as well as  the foundation for his lab’s recent published findings on the role of these RNAs in pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease.