The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) has awarded its Europa Prize to four winners of the national Jugend forscht competition. The DFG’s aim in awarding the prize is to highlight the importance of international cooperation and networking for a successful career in research. DFG Secretary General Dr. Heide Ahrens presented the award to two individual researchers and a team of young researchers at the Jugend forscht final in Heilbronn on 2 June. The focus of the DFG Europa Prize is on preparing the four winners for the European Union Contest for Young Scientists (EUCYS) in Katowice/Poland in September. They receive prize money of €1,000 per project.
Mentors provide subject-specific support for the Jugend forscht winners in their preparations for the European competition. The DFG selects these mentors from among the researchers in early career phases who are in receipt of DFG funding, for example under the Emmy Noether Programme. Another aim here is to promote lasting links among the different generations of researchers.
The prize-winning individual researchers and the team of young researchers:
Anna Maria Weiß (18) from Brandenburg is the national winner in the field of geosciences and spatial sciences. Her subject area is exoplanets, i.e. planets outside our solar system. Using space telescopes, Weiß was able to show that the object TOI1147b is one such exoplanet that is orbiting its parent star in a highly elliptical orbit. She also described the inner properties of the celestial body: the non-habitable exoplanet is a so-called hot Jupiter – a class of exoplanets that have a similar mass and size to Jupiter, but with a significantly higher surface temperature.
Ediz Osman (19) from Bavaria impressed the jury in the technology category. He developed a new vertical take-off concept for use in civil aviation. Vertical take-off aircraft are aeroplanes that take off vertically like a helicopter and then switch to horizontal flight in the air. These have mainly been used in the military sector to date. Osman’s environment-friendly flight concept comprises three power units. Thanks to a sophisticated combination, these generate both an upward thrust that is powered by batteries and a forward thrust that is generated by a hydrogen drive. This enables high speeds and ranges. The young researcher has already successfully tested some components of the concept on a model.
In addition to winning the Europa Prize, the team from Baden-Württemberg, Maja Leber (16) and Julius Gutjahr (17), received the Federal Chancellor’s Prize for the most original project. The two young researchers gained new insights into “reverse bubbles”, known as antibubbles. These consist of a liquid that is separated from its surroundings – usually the same liquid – by a thin layer of air. In a specially developed experimental set-up, Leber and Gutjahr had drops fall from a glass tube into a basin of water mixed with washing-up liquid. The droplet is trapped by a thin layer of air on impact, thereby creating an antibubble. The two young researchers filmed this process and found out which drop heights and pipe diameters work best in generating antibubbles.
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