Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prizes 2013
Wide Range of Disciplines / Number of Prizes and Prize Money Increased
This year's recipients of the most important prize for early career researchers in Germany have been announced. The selection committee appointed by the DFG and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) have chosen nine researchers, four women and five men, to receive the 2013 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize. This year the BMBF has increased the prize money from €16,000 to €20,000 per prize. The number of recipients also increased, with only six prizes having been awarded in previous years. The awards ceremony for the 2013 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prizes will be held on 3 June in Berlin.
- Dr. Christine Hentsche
- Dr. Lena Maier-Hei
- Dr. Nuno Maulid
- Dr. Nicole Mego
- Dr. Thomas Pfeife
- Dr. Holger Johannes Pletsc
- Dr. Volker Presse
- Dr. Daniel Stei
- Dr. Clarissa Vierk
Dr. Christine Hentschel, Sociology
Political scientist Christine Hentschel, who joined the staff of the Humboldt University of Berlin in 2012, studies urban structures and urban sociology. She seeks to apply research perspectives from an African and Asian context to European cities, for example to the rapidly changing district of Neukölln in Berlin. To study urban infrastructures she combines approaches from urban geography, sociology, anthropology, architecture and history.
Dr. Lena Maier-Hein, Medical Informatics
Medical informatics specialist Lena Maier-Hein leads the Computer-Assisted Interventions working group at the German Cancer Research Centre, working on image processing and computer assistance systems for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Among her achievements, she improved an established algorithm for capturing and registering three-dimensional surfaces. In her research she is constantly aware of the application of these systems in clinical practice and their evaluation.
Dr. Nuno Maulide, Organic Chemistry
Portuguese-born chemist Nuno Maulide studied at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, wrote his doctorate in Belgium and worked in the USA before becoming head of a research group at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung in 2009. In 2011 he received an ERC Starting Grant. He and his team are interested in the interface between “classic” organic chemistry, asymmetric catalysis and chemical biology. His particular area of interest is unconventional reaction profiles of organic compounds.
Dr. Nicole Megow, Discrete Mathematics/Computer Science
Business mathematician Nicole Megow is concerned with questions of optimisation motivated by problems in industrial practice. Since completing her doctorate, her work has focused on optimisation under uncertainty and thus the frontier between basic and applied research. She has led a DFG-funded Emmy Noether independent junior research group since 2012, as part of which she develops algorithms and methods that produce good or demonstrably optimum solutions in spite of uncertain data.
Dr. Thomas Pfeifer, Physics
Physicist Thomas Pfeifer studies ultra-fast electronically correlated processes and fundamental electron bonds in atoms and molecules at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics. To do this he has built a unique time- and energy-resolved attosecond spectroscopy laboratory. He is also interested in the physics of free-electron lasers, studying the production of light and the interaction of intense soft X-rays with atoms and molecules.
Dr. Holger Johannes Pletsch, Astrophysics
Over a century after Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves, astrophysicists are still looking for proof. New detectors are studying fast-spinning neutron stars as possible sources of gravitational waves. Holger Pletsch has developed a method for optimally filtering huge quantities of data in spite of limited computer resources. The method is also suitable for other celestial phenomena and has led to the discovery of new and interesting pulsars.
Dr. Volker Presser, Materials Science
Volker Presser, who won the DFG's Bernd Rendel Prize in 2008, carries out research on new fast-charging and high-efficiency energy storage solutions made from eco-friendly and low-cost materials. He studies electrochemical energy storage and develops double-layer capacitors and pseudocapacitors made of carbons and hybrid materials: for example more efficient, mechanically flexible electrodes made of carbon nanofibres or two-/three-dimensional carbides and carbonitrides.
Dr. Daniel Stein, American Studies
Daniel Stein is an expert in North American popular culture and a member of the DFG Research Unit “Popular Seriality – Aesthetics and Practice”. His specialist fields are Afro-American music, such as jazz and blues, and comics as a popular medium which scholars of literature are only gradually beginning to study. His dissertation on “Louis Armstrong's Jazz Autobiographics” methodologically considered both literature and music. He also focuses on central questions in literature and cultural studies.
Dr. Clarissa Vierke, African Studies
Clarissa Vierke combines methods in linguistics, literature studies, cultural studies, philology and anthropology to study culturally specific forms of text and knowledge organisation in Africa. She studies poetics, the history of science, language contact and popular culture in various manuscript cultures and describes developments in language and text. Through this interdisciplinary approach she has expanded the range of available tools and methods. She attaches great importance to the perspective of actors in situ, including in large-scale field studies.