Research Prizes

Philosopher  James Conant was awarded the Humboldt Professorship in 2017.  Conant is interested in the philosophy of language and epistemology and is working on a synthesis of the idealistic German and the analytical American philosophical schools. He worked at Leipzig University from 2017-2022 and then returned to the University of Chicago.

Gregory Crane was awarded the Humboldt Professorship in 2012 and was Humboldt Professor at Leipzig University until 2018. Crane is a classical philologist and applies computer science methods to systematise human cultural development. As a pioneer of the digital humanities, he has supported Leipzig’s Institute of Computer Science in its development into a centre for the digital humanities.

Oskar Hallatschek was awarded a Humboldt Professorship in the field of biological soft matter physics in 2021. His research straddles the fields of biophysics, mathematics and medicine, providing groundbreaking insights into evolutionary dynamics through mathematical and theoretical models as well as experiments. Oskar Hallatschek was a Humboldt Professor at the Leipzig University until 2023. He is now at the University of Berkeley and remains an Honorary Professor at the Peter Debey Institute for Soft Matter Physics.

Tina Malti was awarded a Humboldt Professorship in the field of developmental psychology in 2022. She conducts research at the Faculty of Education and the Faculty of Medicine and as director of the newly founded Humboldt Center for Child Development (humankind). In addition to basic research into children’s socio-emotional development, Tina Malti also hopes to transfer her research findings to clinical practice fields.

Jens Meiler was awarded a Humboldt Professorship in 2019. A pharmaceutical chemist and bioinformatics researcher, he conducts research where biology, physics, chemistry and computer science meet. At the new Institute for Innovation in Rational Drug Design, Meiler carefully combines computer-aided processes with experimental methods in order to develop new pharmaceuticals. With the further development of the ROSETTA programme, he will also establish a “European Centre for ROSETTA Therapeutic Design”.

Sayan Mukherjee has received the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship for Artificial Intelligence in 2022. The mathematician, statistician and computer scientist has taken up his professorship at the Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence (ScaDS.AI) Dresden/Leipzig, and has also established a research group at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences. His expertise in topological data analysis is expected to pave new ways in the analysis of biological and medical data, opening up an innovative branch of research in precision medicine.

Prof Dr Dejan Gajic is a Professor of Mathematical Physics at the Institute for Theoretical Physics. He works on precise mathematical aspects of the evolution of perturbations of black holes solutions to the Einstein equations and the nature of singularities in black hole interiors. He received an ERC grant for “The Mathematical Analysis of Extremal Black Holes and Gravitational Radiation” in 2022.

Ana Bastos has been Professor of Land-Atmosphere Interactions at Leipzig University since 2024. Her ERC grant “Forest vulnerability to compound extremes and disturbances in a changing climate” runs until 2027.

Ruth Stassart, senior consultant in the Department of Neuropathology at Leipzig University Hospital, researches therapeutic approaches for nerve diseases. The support provided by the ERC Starting Grant from 2021 until 2026 will boost the Faculty of Medicine’s Brain and Psychological Disorders research profile area.

The psychologist Dr. Sebastian Grüneisen has been researching and teaching at the Institute of Educational Sciences of the Faculty of Education at the University of Leipzig since the beginning of November 2022 as part of a tenure-track professorship. His research is focusing on the development of social behavior in early childhood.

Prof. Dr. Lukasz Grabowski conducts research in theoretical mathematics at the Institute of Mathematics. In 2019, he received an ERC grant on the topic "Limits of Structures in Algebra and Combinatorics".

Prof. Dr. Alexey Bufetov is Professor of Probability Theory at the Institute of Mathematics. He deals with large random systems and combines the methods of statistical mechanics with other areas of mathematics such as algebra, analysis or combinatorics.

Prof Dr Gesa Hartwigsen researches neural networks for cognitive functions at the Wilhelm Wundt Institute of Psychology. From 2023 to 2027, she is leading the ERC project “The Flexible Brain: (Re-)shaping Adaptation in Semantic Cognition”.

Professor of Neuroscience Stefan Hallermann has been researching molecular and biophysical mechanisms in the brain in order to better understand the process of learning and memory since 2019. His Heisenberg professorship at the Faculty of Medicine culminated in his taking over the Chair of Physiology in 2018.

Prof. Dr. Axel Körner has been Professor of Recent Cultural History and History of Ideas at the Faculty of History, Arts and Regional Sciences since October 2021. He received the ERC Advanced Grant for his research on the role of opera in the Habsburg Monarchy. In the coming years, Prof. Dr. Axel Körner will focus his research on his ERC project and, in the longer term, on the field of European cultural history and the history of ideas in their transnational and global interconnections.

Professor Berend Isermann, head of Institute of Laboratory Medicine, Clinical Chemistry and Molecular Diagnostics, receives European Research Council (ERC) funding from 2024 to 2029 for the project Targeting mechanisms of Thrombo-inflammation. The Professor of Laboratory Medicine at Leipzig University is investigating the molecular mechanisms underlying thrombo-inflammation, as they occur frequently and can be life-threatening, yet lack specific treatment options. Thrombo-inflammation is a pathological process that occurs when the balance between blood clotting and inflammation gets out of control.

Nico Eisenhauer is honoured in 2021 for his excellent work on the impact of of global change on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.

László Székelyhidi was honoured in 2018 for his excellent research on the theory of partial differential equations.

Torben Schiffner was awarded the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award in 2020. Endowed with 1.65 million euros, the award will enable the virologist to set up a new working group and a laboratory for vaccine development at Leipzig University over the next five years.