The Sir David Cooksey Prize in Translation 2025 has been awarded to Radoslav Enchev for delivering a groundbreaking disruptive technology at the interface of structural biology, AI and drug discovery with the “Chronobot” platform.
This prize highlights the contributions of Crick scientists who are driving innovation, improving healthcare and inspiring a new generation of translational researchers. It is named in honour of the late Sir David Cooksey who was a key figure in UK medical research and former Chair of the Crick’s Board of Trustees.
Rado leads the Visual Biochemistry Laboratory at the Crick. He and his team have delivered a technology step-change in structural biology: developing an end-to-end, time-resolved cryo-EM workflow that makes millisecond capture of transient molecular states reproducible and facility-compatible.
The platform hardware - the “Chronobot” system - mixes reactants, imposes precise delays and vitrifies with AI-guided control of ice quality and grid yield; massively reducing the levels of sample wastage once synonymous with cryo-EM, and opening the door to dynamic cryo-imaging at unprecedented scale.
Once bespoke, this platform now forms a bookable capability that a core facility can run to specification. A first-generation automated unit has been installed and validated at the Crick, with feedback from academic and industrial pilots being integrated into a second-generation design intended as an initial production unit for deployment at multiple sites.
“I'm honoured that my lab’s work on enabling time-resolved structural studies has been recognised with the Sir David Cooksey Prize for Translation. This recognition goes out to everyone who helped make it happen,” said Rado on receiving the prize.
“Huge thanks to the lab team, to our brilliant collaborators, and the Innovation and Business team who first backed the transformative potential of this work.”
Also recognised on the night as runners up were Adam Sateriale and Bishara Marzook from the Crick’s Cryptosporidiosis Laboratory. Together, they devised an innovative genome-wide CRISPR-Cas9 knockout screening strategy to discover the host requirements of intestinal parasite Cryptosporidium, revealing a weakness that could be exploited by an abandoned cholesterol-lowering drug.
Bishara was also selected as one of 14 new Early Career Translation Fellows, alongside Robert Quinlan; Peter Craggs; Shudong Li; Aurora Idilli; Sandra Segura-Bayona; Max Emmerich; Oscar Atkins; Ming Shing Hung; Stephane Mouilleron; Huda Khalaf; Christelle Soudy; Zayd Tippu; and Tej Pandya.
