Randall Platt receives the ETH Latsis Prize

As part of ETH Day celebrations tomorrow, Randall Platt will be awarded the ETH Zurich Latsis Prize. The professor in the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering at ETH Zurich in Basel has carried out exceptional work in the field of genome engineering – an achievement made all the more impressive given his young age.

Editorial team 15.11.2019

You could call him a toolmaker of modern biology. In what are still the early stages of his extremely successful career, Randall Platt, Professor of Biological Engineering at the Department of Biosystems at ETH Zurich in Basel, has already developed many methods and technologies that are used by life science researchers in laboratories around the world.

He is particularly renowned for the Cas9 mice, an animal model he developed based on the CRISPR-Cas system, which allows scientists to edit genes in individual organs or tissues in order to study their function or role in disease. Platt’s other pioneering developments include a cellular biological data logger that is also based on the CRISPR-Cas system. Cells can use it to record which genes are being expressed throughout time by converting gene expression information into DNA sequences that can be accessed later.

Platt joined ETH in 2016 at the age of 29; he is one of its youngest professors. The university has now decided to recognise his visionary ideas and exceptional achievements by awarding him with this year’s ETH Zurich Latsis Prize.

Read more about Randall Platt in ETH News, 01.06.2017.

(Video: ETH Zurich / Gabriela D'Hondt)