ISBER Corner: The ISBER 2025 Awards

ISBER would like to present the following ISBER Corner article on The ISBER 2025 Awards to our membership by Alison Parry-Jones and Dayong Gao!

The ISBER Nominating Committee, chaired by the ISBER Past President, manages the ISBER annual awards, which recognize achievements within our biobanking community. The 2024–2025 committee was chaired by Dr. Alison Parry-Jones.

The ISBER Award for Outstanding Achievement in Biobanking is designed to recognize individuals who have made outstanding, indisputable contributions to the field of biobanking. Contributions may include; advancing the science of biobanking, creating depth of knowledge, demonstrating world-class expertise, making remarkable discoveries or bringing the field into further prominence. Dr. Jajah Fachiroh was selected as the recipient of the 2025 award. This award honors her groundbreaking contributions to advancing biobanking practices in Indonesia and her exemplary dedication to promoting high-quality, standardized biobanking in low- and middle-income countries. Dr. Fachiroh has been instrumental in establishing biobanking best practices in Indonesia through education and promotion that leverage the expertise from ISBER and other global initiatives. She has influenced the development of the national biobanking framework in Indonesia. Through her leadership as ISBER’s Regional Ambassador for the Indo-Pacific Rim, she has become an invaluable resource and guiding light for the biobanking community in Indonesia and beyond. This well-deserved recognition celebrates Dr. Fachiroh’s commitment, influence, and tireless efforts in shaping the future of biobanking globally.

The ISBER Leadership Award is designed to honor ISBER members who have demonstrated exceptional leadership within ISBER to further the mission and goals of the society. Ways a volunteer may demonstrate exceptional leadership include; developing a key project or initiative, driving meaningful change to improve the society, or having a history of longstanding meaningful contributions with excellence and integrity. Ms. Helen Morrin was selected as the recipient of the 2025 award. Helen has been an active ISBER member since 2007 and, in that time, she has worked tirelessly to further the goals of the ISBER. She is the Past-Chair of the Science Policy Community of Practice and has special interests in ethics, legislation, cultural, and societal issues impacting biobanking and human specimen research. Helen was previously awarded the ISBER Special Service Award in 2023. Her background is in diagnostic pathology and cancer research and she has been involved in biobanking since developing He Taonga Tapu Cancer Society Tissue Bank at the University of Otago, New Zealand in 2000. She is a past executive member of the Australasian Biospecimens Network Association and she has forged a leading role working with indigenous populations and championing culturally responsive biobanking.

It is the privilege of the President of the Board to be able to select several ISBER members for Special Service Awards each year. Eight outstanding ISBER members have been selected to receive this award in 2025 as follows: Dr. Engela Helena Conradie, Dr. Hengjun Gao, Ms. Debra Leiolani Garcia, Ms. Cassandra Griffin, Dr. Gregory Grossman, Dr. Wayne Ng, Dr. Stella Somiari, and Dr. Zhiquan (Andy) Shu. These awardees are from all over the world, covering four regions (Americas, EMEA, Indo-Pacific, China) of the entire ISBER community. They have played pivotal roles and provided outstanding leadership in ISBER as well as regional and global biobanking initiatives, events, publications, and conferences. They have also made distinguished contributions to advancing education in biobanking science and practice, promoting biobank-driven research, fostering collaboration across disciplines and regions, and ensuring that biorepositories continue to serve as vital assets in scientific, medical, agricultural, industrial discovery and development worldwide.

The ISBER Best Paper Award recognizes the most impactful article that was published in Biopreservation and Biobanking (BIO), in the previous 1 year (2024). This award is made possible with the generous support of the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Publishers and an anonymous donor. The Best Paper Award Nomination Committee is composed of the BIO editor-in-chief, three deputy editors, the European editor, the Asian editor, and a Section editor. Selection of the Best Paper Award is based on the paper’s quality, including both originality/novelty of the research and its potential applications in the field of biopreservation and biobanking, ranging from biobanking governance, operation, management, cryobiology, cryopreservation technology, cold chain, ethical/legal/social issues, to biospecimen science and quality control.

The awardees of the 2025 ISBER Best Paper Award were elected to be the co-authors: Xin Li, Shuyong Zhang, Yuqi Zhang, and Xinli Zhou, for their article entitled “Visualization of Ice Crystal Behavior in Mouse Oocytes During High-Speed Quench Cooling and Ice Inhibition by Antifreezing Hydrogels,” Volume 22, Number 4, 2024, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1089/bio.2023.0108. This article addressed both fundamental and practical issues in cryopreservation, i.e., lethal ice formation and its inhibition during cooling. This study presents a significant advancement in cryopreservation techniques, particularly focusing on oocyte preservation using antifreeze alginate hydrogels. This work not only contributes to optimizing cryoprotectant concentrations but also opens new avenues for improving cryopreservation outcomes in reproductive and regenerative medicine. The combination of advanced visualization techniques and novel hydrogel formulations makes this study an outstanding contribution to the field. The experiment was well designed, the results were solid, and the article was well-written with high-quality images.

The awards were presented at the ISBER Annual General Meeting at the 2025 Annual Meeting in Montreal, Canada in May. ISBER would like to thank the corporate sponsors who generously supported these and other 2025 awards. Congratulations to all our 2025 award recipients!

Please click the following link to view the article:
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1177/19475535251361070