Sofja Kovalevskaja Award for Dr. Jan-Erik Siemens: Scientist Returns from the USA to Germany

Dr. Siemens investigates how mammals, and thus humans, manage to maintain a constant body temperature of around 37 degrees Celsius. The molecular basis of temperature regulation will be a focus of his research at the MDC.

Dr. Siemens was born in Schleswig, Germany, and studied biochemistry at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. After receiving his doctorate in 2004 from the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, Switzerland, he went to the U.S.

Dr. Jan Siemens (Photo: private)

Dr. Siemens is the second recipient of the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award to join the MDC. In 2002, Dr. Michael Gotthardt received the award and returned from the U.S. to Germany. He now holds a joint professorship at the Charité — Universitätsmedizin Berlin and at the MDC.

With the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award,the foundation seeks to attract successful top-rank junior researchers from all over the world to spend time researching in Germany. The researchers receive up to 1.65 million euros over a five-year period in order to set up their own research projects at an institute of their choice in Germany.

The award is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and was conferred for the first time in 2002. It is named after the Russian mathematician Sofja Kovalevskaja (1850−1891) whostudied mathematics as a private student in Heidelberg and Berlin and obtained her doctorate from the University of Göttingen. She became the first woman in Europe to hold a professor’s chair at Stockholm University, Sweden.