The first recipient of the Brian Wilkins Memorial Prize is Vincent Burrus, currently working as a post-doctoral Reseach Fellow in the laboratory of Matthew Waldor at Tuft's New England Medical Centre, Boston, USA.   His research has focused on Integrative Conjugative Elements.   Not only has he performed excellent primary work but as also written very useful reviews of the field.   Despite it being his furst major talk at an interational meeting, Vincent gave a clear and interesting account of his research.   The accompanying photo shows Vincent being congratulated by Susan Wilkins and Chris Thomas the day after the award was announced at the Plasmid Biology 2004 Conference on Cofru.

The other short-listed candidates were Rebecca Byram from NIH Rocky Mountain Labs in Montana, USA & Shamsu Zzaman from the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, USA.