The Leonidas Zervas Award is presented in commemoration of his outstanding contributions to peptide science. The award is given to the scientist who has made the most outstanding contributions to the chemistry, biochemistry and/or biology of peptides in the five years preceding the date of selection, and is sponsored by the donation of Dr. Rao Makineni.

The 2026 awardee is Professor Steven Ballet Congratulations!

Steven Ballet is Full Professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB, Brussels, Belgium). He completed his PhD at the VUB in 2007, under the supervision of his mentor Prof. Dirk Tourwé. During his PhD formation, he was submerged in the fascinating world of peptides and peptidomimetics and specialized in the synthesis of conformationally constrained amino acids. Directly following his PhD training, he went for a first postdoctoral stay in Australia at the University of Adelaide with Professor Andrew Abell. There, both ring-closing metathesis (RCM) and b-amino acids were used as modalities to enhance secondary structures in either a- or b-peptides. During a second postdoctoral position at the Institut de Recherches Cliniques de Montréal (Montreal, Canada), he conducted research on advanced opioid peptides and mixed opioid/non-opioid hybrids, for an improved control over antinociception versus detrimental side effects, efforts that resulted in highly potent analgesics with safer profiles. Since 2010, Steven has served as Head of the Research Group of Organic Chemistry within the Departments of Chemistry and Bioengineering Sciences at his alma mater, the VUB. His main area of research focuses on peptide and peptidomimetic compounds and their applications in medicinal chemistry and biomaterial development. More specifically, efforts in his group span i) the construction of diverse custom amino acids for peptidomimetic design, ii) the preparation of (biased/multifunctional) orthosteric and allosteric ligands for a plethora of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), iii) the structural elucidation of (in)active GPCR states, iv) (structure-based) design and synthesis of protein mimetics for the modulation of protein-protein interactions, v) late-stage modification of peptides, and vi) the development of peptide-based hydrogels, mostly intended as controlled-drug release matrices. He is currently author of circa 172 papers and 3 book chapters, and he is inventor of 7 patents.