1. Activities
  2. Awards and Grants
  3. Kiem Award

Kiem Award

The KNVM/NVMM science committee makes the Kiem Awards available for the best first publications written by young microbiologists, whom are society members, are employed at a Dutch university or research institute, and are at the start of their microbiology career. Submissions are evaluated based on the quality of the candidate’s first publication, on condition that it has been published less than a year ago, in a peer-reviewed academic journal and that the candidate is the (shared) first author. Every year during the KNVM/NVMM Scientific Spring Meeting up to three prizes are awarded, one each in the categories “general microbiology”, “medical microbiology”, or “environmental microbiology”. The jury consists of members of the KNVM/NVMM science committee. You can mail your submission to secretariaat@nvmm.nl

Submissions contain

  • the article in question (as PDF)
  • a note of which category the thesis should be evaluated in (general microbiology /medical microbiology /environmental microbiology)
  • a complete publication list (including all co-authored publications, also of previous scientific work at a different institution) of the young scientist.

Submission deadline: 13 December 2024

The prizes, which were first awarded in 2000, are named Kiem, which is Dutch for ‘germ’ (germination).


Awardees

2024

  • Pengfei Li. Mpox virus infection and drug treatment modelled in human skin organoids. 
  • Francesc Corbera Rubio. Meta-imics profilin of full-scale groundwater rapid sand filters explains stratification of iron, ammonium and manganese removals. 

2023

  • Maga Rogowska-van der Molen. Insect Gut Isolate Pseudomonas sp. Strain Nvir Degrades the Toxic Plant Metabolite Nitropropionic Acid
  • Marieke Kuijk. Interference with lipoprotein maturation sensitizes methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus to human group IIA-phospholipase A2 and daptomycin
  • Renee Kapteijn. Endocytosis-like DNA uptake by cell wall-deficient bacteria

2022

  • Heike Becker. Higher Prevalence of Bacteroides fragilis in Crohn's Disease Exacerbations and Strain-Dependent Increase of Epithelial Resistance. Front Microbiol. 2021;12:598232.
  • Koen Pelsma. Amsterdam urban canals contain novel niches for methane-cycling microorganisms. Environ Microbiol. 2022;24(1):82-97.
  • Sam van Beljouw. The gRAMP CRISPR-Cas effector is an RNA endonuclease complexed with a caspase-like peptidase. Science. 2021;373(6561):1349-1353.

2021

  • Ilse Boekhoud. Plasmid-mediated metronidazole resistance in Clostridioides difficile. Nat Commun. 2020;11(1):598.
  • Nunzia Picone. Geothermal Gases Shape the Microbial Community of the Volcanic Soil of Pantelleria, Italy. mSystems. 2020;5(6):e00517-20.
  • Zheren Zhang. Antibiotic production in Streptomyces is organized by a division of labor through terminal genomic differentiation. Sci Adv. 2020;6(3):eaay5781.

2020

  • Rob van Dalen. Langerhans Cells Sense Staphylococcus aureus Wall Teichoic Acid through Langerin To Induce Inflammatory Responses
  • Else-Jasmijn Hassing. Connecting central carbon and aromatic amino acid metabolisms to improve de novo 2-phenylethanol production in Saccharomyces cerevisiae
  • Xinyue Li. MUC1 is a receptor for the Salmonella SiiE adhesin that enables apical invasion into enterocytes

2019

  • Angelino Tromp. Human CD45 is an F-component-specific receptor for the staphylococcal toxin Panton–Valentine leucocidin
  • Dani Heesterbeek. Bacterial killing by complement requires membrane attack complex formation via surface-bound C5 convertases
  • Karina Ranijan. Stress-induced formation of cell wall-deficient cells in filamentous actinomycetes

2018

  • Catalin Bunduc. Structure of the mycobacterial ESX-5 type VII secretion system membrane complex by single-particle analysis. Nat Microbiol 2: 17047 (2017). 
  • Hongbo Guo. Highly pathogenic influenza A (H5Nx) viruses with altered H5 receptor-binding specificity. Emerg Infect Dis 23: 220-231 (2017).
  • Lavina Gambelli. Community composition and ultrastructure of a nitrate-dependent anaerobic methane-oxidizing enrichment culture. Appl Environ Microbiol 84: e02186-17 (2018).

2017

  • Niels Willemse. An emerging zoonotic clone in the Netherlands provides clues to virulence and zoonotic potential of Streptococcus suis. Sci Rep 6: 28984 (2016). 
  • Wenshi Wang. Convergent transcription of interferon-stimulated genes by TNF-α and IFN-α augments antiviral activity against HCV and HEV. Sci Rep 6: 25482 (2016).
  • Vincent van Winden. Mycosins are required for the stabilization of the ESX-1 and ESX-5 type VII secretion membrane complexes. MBio 7: e01471-16 (2016).

2016

  • Eric Hester. Stable and sporadic symbiotic communities of coral and algal holobionts. ISME J 10: 1157-1196 (2016).
  • Kirsten Koymans. Structural basis for inhibition of TLR2 by staphylococcal superantigen-like protein 3 (SSL3). Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 112: 11018-11023 (2015).
  • Kirsten Ziesemer. Intrinsic challenges in ancient microbiome reconstruction using 16S rRNA gene amplification. Sci Rep 5: 16498 (2015).

2015

  • Guido Bastiaens. Efficacy and safety of the mosquitocidal drug ivermectin to prevent Malaria transmission after treatment: a double-blind, randomized, clinical trial. Clin Infect Dis 60: 357-365 (2015).
  • Daan Swarts. DNA-guided DNA interference by a prokaryotic Argonaute. Nature 507: 258-261 (2015).

2014

  • Karlijn Bastiaansen. The Prc and RseP proteases control bacterial cell-surface signalling activity. Environm Microbiol 16: 2433-2443 (2014).
  • Jelle Slager. Antibiotic-induced replication stress triggers bacterial competence by increasing gene dosage near the origin. Cell 157: 395-406 (2014).
  • András Spaan. The staphylococcal toxin Panton-Valentine Leukocidin targets human C5a receptors. Cell Host Microbe 13, 584-594 (2014).

2013

  • Qian Feng. MDA5 detects the double-stranded RNA replicative form in Picornavirus-infected cells. Cell Reports 2: 1187-1196 (2012).

2012

  • Ambepitya Wickramsinghe. Binding of avian coronavirus spike proteins to host factors reflects virus tropism and pathogenicity.J Virol 85: 8903-8912 (2011). 
  • Bas Surewaard. Inactivation of staphylococcal phenol soluble modulins by serum lipoprotein particles. Plos Pathog 8: e1002606 (2012).
  • Kathrin Beilharz. Control of cell division in Streptococcus pneumoniae by the conserved Ser/Thr protein kinase StkP. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 109: E905-913 (2012).

 2011

  • Robin Ohm. Genome sequence of the model mushroom Schizophyllum commune. Nat Biotechnol 28: 957-963 (2010).
  • Els van der Meijden. Discovery of a new huma polyomavirus associated with Trichodysplasia spinulosa in an immunocompromized patient. Plos Pathog 6: e1001024 (2010).
  • Mohammad Al-Najjar. Conversion and conservation of light energy in a photosynthetic microbial mat ecosystem.  ISME J 4: 440-449 (2010).