Introducing John Hatch Memorial Prize for Mentorship Recipient Aleksandar Radakovic

Next week, the 2025 Genes in Space winning team will be announced at the ASCEND conference in Las Vegas. Not only will we be honoring student achievement, but also celebrating mentorship of young scientists. The 2025 John Hatch Memorial Prize in Mentorship will be presented to veteran Genes in Space mentor Dr. Aleks Radakovic.

The annual award recognizes Genes in Space mentors who have demonstrated exceptional dedication to the growth and development of their mentees. Aleks' enthusiasm for science is authentic and infectious, and the strong relationships he has formed with the students he worked with are a testament to the impact he has made, both on them and on the Genes in Space program as a whole.

Aleks previously mentored five Genes in Space Finalist teams, including the 2023 winner, Isabelle Jiang. He earned his Ph.D. in the Nobel Prize-winning Szostak Lab at Harvard Medical School, studying processes that drove the coevolution of nucleic acids and proteins to establish the Central Dogma of biology. He now serves as a Chicago Fellow at the University of Chicago, where he is piecing together the historical events that led to the evolution of the universally conserved genetic code.

The Hatch Prize is funded by the Hatch family, with additional support from New England Biolabs. Like John Hatch, Aleks has been an outstanding mentor, forging deep relationships with mentees that endure well beyond the competition cycle. As the Hatch Prize honoree, he will join the panel of judges that will help to select the Genes in Space 2025 winner.

Read Aleks' reflection on mentorship below:

I first met John Hatch in the kitchen of our mutual friend Adrija. We were tasked with preparing food for our PhD program’s upcoming retreat in Provincetown. Despite never having formally met, John and I worked together as though we were lifelong friends. Although this was my first and only interaction with John, I will never forget how welcome and empowered he made me feel, even though I was a complete stranger to him.

It was only after I joined Genes in Space several months later that I got to learn just how passionate John was about mentoring and science outreach. No wonder he made me feel so welcome and capable that September afternoon! He was an outstanding mentor with a penchant for not only helping young scientists (and his peers) achieve their goals but empowering them to set their goals ever higher and forge paths up toward them even if they were all the way in space. From the moment I learned about John’s instrumental role in Genes in Space, I felt inspired by his still-present infectious energy, and I could not wait to continue his rich mentorship legacy.

Throughout my five years as a Genes in Space mentor, I had the privilege of working with five incredible groups of high school students who have shown me what true courage in science looks like. As I reflected on what mentoring such amazing students meant to me, I kept coming back to the same visual motif. Each year, one vulnerable candle was lit by a daring, budding scientist in the darkness of our collective human ignorance. Invisible to everyone else and at risk of being extinguished, my key responsibility as a mentor was protecting the jittery flame and growing it so that it became robust and bright enough for everyone else to see. This meant empowering my mentees to rigorously assess their lines of reasoning, serving as their loyal listener while they did this, and working hard to track down all the different techniques that would help us grow their fickle candle into a roaring fire. Standing side by side with my mentees as we admired the worlds they eventually illuminated was a priceless moment every time. John summarized this transcendental experience perfectly when, in response to the question “What is the time burden of Genes in Space mentorship?”, he simply said, “I wish I could do more of it.”

To be awarded the John Hatch Memorial Prize in Mentorship is a tremendous honor that will only inspire me to do more of what John loved doing – illuminating the world through mentorship. I hope to carry on John’s mentorship legacy with the same tenacity and passion he exemplified.