Schering Stiftung announced Monday, Sept. 3, that they were awarding the 2018 Ernst Schering Prize to molecular biologist Bonnie Bassler for her pioneering work on bacterial quorum sensing.

Bassler, Princeton’s Squibb Professor in Molecular Biology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, has paved the way for a vital new research field in microbiology: intercellular bacterial communication, known as quorum sensing. She discovered the universal use of chemical signaling between bacteria, revolutionizing the view of the microscopic organisms.