Five award winners will each receive up to €5 million at the award ceremony for the Alexander von Humboldt Professorships in Berlin on 12 May, 2015

Five award winners from abroad will each receive up to €5 million and soon conduct research in Berlin, Göttingen, Halle, Munich and Tübingen.

BONN, 11-5-2015 — /EuropaWire/ — On 12 May, Federal Minister of Education and Research Johanna Wanka and Helmut Schwarz, the President of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, will confer the Alexander von Humboldt Professorships in Berlin. The Alexander von Humboldt Professorship is Germany’s best-endowed research award. The Humboldt Foundation confers it on leading researchers from all disciplines who work in other countries. The award money is €5 million for individuals conducting experimental research and €3.5 million for researchers working in theoretical fields. The award money is to be used to finance the winner’s first five years of research in Germany.

The five award winners (four women and one man) were nominated by German universities and research institutes; they are expected to conduct research in Germany over a longer period. The purpose of the award, which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, is to enable the universities in Berlin, Göttingen, Halle, Munich and Tübingen that were selected this year to attract world-class academics and develop internationally competitive teams and structures around them.

Note to journalists: It is permitted to film, photograph and make audio recordings during the award ceremony. Advance video material and photographs are available at:www.humboldt-professur.de.

Please register by e-mail or fax by 8 May using the registration form.

Interviews with the award winners
Date/Time: Tuesday, 12 May 2015, 12 to 1 p.m. (or by arrangement)
Venue: Hotel Arcotel John F Berlin, Werderscher Markt 11, 10117 Berlin

Award ceremony
Time/Date: Tuesday, 12 May 2015, 7 p.m. (doors open at 6 p.m.)
Venue: Hauptstadtrepräsentanz Deutsche Telekom AG, Französische Str. 33 a-c, 10117 Berlin

Contact on location:
Kristina Güroff and Teresa Havlicek, Tel.: 0151 / 14 015 796 and 0151 / 67 317 585

The award winners at a glance:

• Elisabeth Décultot, Literature, will switch from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Paris to Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg.
• Harald Helfgott, Pure Mathematics, will come to the University of Göttingen from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Paris.
• Sharon Macdonald, Cultural Anthropology / Museology, will switch from the University of York, Great Britain, to the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation) and the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin.
• Karen Radner, Classical and Ancient Studies, will come to Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München from University College London.
• Marja Timmermans, Molecular Genetics, will come to the University of Tübingen from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, USA.

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

Every year, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation enables more than 2,000 researchers from all over the world to spend time researching in Germany. The Foundation maintains a network of well over 26,000 Humboldtians from all disciplines in more than 140 countries worldwide – including 51 Nobel Laureates.

Contact

Teresa Havlicek
Kristina Güroff
Press, Communications and Marketing
Tel.: +49 228 833-423/-455
Fax: +49 228 833-441
presse@avh.de

Georg Scholl
Head of
Press, Communications and Marketing
Tel.: +49 228 833-258
Fax: +49 228 833-441
presse@avh.de