This summer, 20 of the UK's brightest and most promising scientists received a unique and significant career boost with the launch of the Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowships.

The fellowships will provide newly qualified postdoctoral researchers with a chance to make an early start in developing their independent research careers and the freedom to pursue important research questions in the best laboratories both in the UK and overseas.

The quality of the applications in this first round of awards was exceptional. Recipients will be based at 13 institutions across the UK, covering a broad spectrum of biomedical research in locations as diverse as rural Tanzania to Stanford. They are exploring some important and fascinating research questions.

For example, Rebecca Baggaley, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, will use mathematical models to determine the effect of treatments for herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) and other interventions on HIV transmission in sub-Saharan Africa in order to determine the public health benefit of HSV-2 control.

Meanwhile, Sander van Kasteren, from the University of Dundee, will explore the way vaccines are processed by our immune system. Adjuvants, compounds that improve the efficiency of vaccines, will be attached to small particles alone or in combination using cutting-edge chemical techniques. Understanding the specific roles of these chemical compounds will hopefully lead to better vaccine design.

At University College London, Benedetto De Martino will be investigating how emotions have a profound effect on the choices we make. Little is known of how these processes are integrated in the brain and how they affect the construction of preferences. Using state-of-the-art neuroimaging techniques, a theory of choice that takes into account the actual complexity of human behaviour will be developed.

We hope that this scheme will foster a new generation of innovative, talented and exceptional scientists, and we will follow their careers with high expectations that outstanding scientists will mature.