Prizes & Awards

Congratulations to Gary Lewin on his election as a new member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina! The prestigious honor recognizes his scientific accomplishments over the span of his career.

Checkpoint inhibitors help fight cancer but increase the risk of heart disease. An interdisciplinary team, including researchers from the Max Delbrück Center, is investigating how the therapy can be made safer. The Hector Foundation is supporting the project with €1.3 million.

ScienceCLASH, a podcast developed at the Gläsernes Labor, has won the MINT-EC School Award, which is sponsored by the Dr. Hans Riegel Foundation and comes with 7,000 euros in funding. A second season is already in the works – and researchers at the Max Delbrück Center are invited to participate.

This year, the Pre-GoBio program is supporting two planned spin-offs. Paul Schöpe aims to bring a drug targeting colorectal cancer metastases to market. And Ines Lahmann will further develop NMJCare, a model that can be used to test therapies for neuromuscular diseases.

How do the ApoE4 gene variant and the herpes simplex virus work together to increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease? Agnieszka Rybak-Wolf has been awarded a grant from Alzheimer Forschung Initiative to study the molecular interaction between the two risk factors.

Karen Christman, a Stiftung Charité Visiting Fellow at the Max Delbrück Center, is among the first researchers to have won a Humboldt Research Award under Germany’s Global Minds Initiative. The award will enable her to expand her research in Germany on bioengineering.

Lena Fürst, a member of Annette Hammes-Lewin's team, is being honored by the Berlin Chamber of Commerce and Industry for finishing at the top of her biology lab technician training class. In this interview, she talks about the obstacles she has had to overcome and offers advice to other trainees.

What does it take to turn Max Delbrück Center research into a startup? Meet Klaas Yperman, our very first Entrepreneur-in-Residence. Yperman has won a Helmholtz Enterprise grant to develop a roadmap for turning compounds discovered in the Lewin lab into a drug to treat neuropathic pain.

The Max Delbrück Center has once again been awarded the “audit berufundfamilie” certification – an acknowledgment of our commitment to supporting employees through all stages of their lives, whether caring for children or aging parents.

According to a ranking by Clarivate, Friedemann Paul and Nikolaus Rajewsky are among the most Highly Cited Researchers in the world. Both made the list repeatedly. Germany ranks fourth of countries and regions, behind the U.S., mainland China and the U.K.