Winner: Eckard Wimmer

Eckard WimmerProfessor

Eckard Wimmer of Setauket has received the 2012 Robert Koch Gold Medal, an international scientific award issued by the Robert Koch Foundation under the patronage of the German minister of health, based on Wimmer's "groundbreaking research" on the poliovirus. Wimmer is a distinguished professor in Stony Brook University's Department of Molecular Genetics & Microbiology as well as a fellow of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is known for his work on the elucidation of the chemical structure of the poliovirus genome in the late 1970s, university officials said.