AUB Head Congratulates ex-Student Patapoutian on Nobel Prize

AUB Head Congratulates ex-Student Patapoutian on Nobel Prize

AUB President Fadlo Khuri has expressed his pride in Professor Ardem Patapoutian, who was awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, through a congratulatory letter in which he expressed that the AUB community is doubly pleased as Patapoutian is not only Lebanese, but also a former student at the American University of Beirut.

Patapoutian, professor of neuroscience at Scripps Research institute in California, an American University of Beirut (AUB) alumnus and former student, has been awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Committee in Stockholm announced Monday that Patapoutian and his fellow molecular biologist David Julius have been awarded for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch. Patapoutian is the first AUB alumnus to win a Nobel Prize.

In a year when many had expected the prize to go to at least one of the makers of a COVID-19 vaccine, the Nobel Committee's Thomas Perlmann stated in the prize announcement that Julius and Patapoutian had "unlocked one of the secrets of nature," how we sense and feel our way around in the world.

In his research, Patapoutian used "pressure-sensitive cells to discover a novel class of sensors that respond to mechanical stimuli in the skin and