Today, in Trento (Italy), the European Commission has awarded three prizes to three MSCA fellows for having reached excellent results as Promising Research Talent, Communicating Science and Nurturing Research Talent.

The "Promising Research Talent" prize was assigned to Maanasa Raghavan, a 29-year-old researcher in paleogenomics. Maanasa has decrypted the genome sequence of a 24,000-year-old modern human, demonstrating all the characteristics to become a great scientist. Now she is working on important aspects of peopling of the Americas. Despite her young age, Maanasa has had many citations in leading scientific journals like Nature and Science.

The prize "Communicating Science" went to Shane Bergin, a 34-year-old former MSCA fellow now physics lecturer at Trinity College Dublin. Shane conceived an innovative campaign called "DARTofPhysics" that was run on the Dublin metro. The idea was simple but beautiful: "What if we could learn about physics commuting between home and work?" The researcher aroused commuters' interest in physics with a good dose of creativity. Currently, Shane is a regular contributor to a radio show for RTE focused on the impact of science and scientists in Ireland.

Last but not least, the European Commission has honoured with the prize for "Nurturing Research Talent" a 30-year-old researcher, Sarah Bohndiek, for being so dedicated to mentoring the next generation of researchers. Sarah, who is group leader at the University of Cambridge and Cancer Research UK, holds an MSCA career Integration Grant and leads an international research team on the development of new techniques for imaging oxygen and oxidative stress in cancer. Passionate and enthusiastic, Sarah develops projects for school pupils and is remarkably active in promoting science as a career path.

The three winners received their prize certificates from the European Commission during the "Empowerment of the Next Generation of Researchers" conference of the Italian EU Presidency.