Prizes & Awards

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.

U.K.-based Wellcome has awarded over €2 million to an international research effort to uncover how malaria can injure developing babies. Emanuel Wyler at the Max Delbrück Center will play a key role in studying the molecular interaction between the parasite Plasmodium falciparum and the placenta.

Five scientists from the Max Delbrück Center have been named among the 100 most important minds in Berlin science in 2025 by the newspaper Tagesspiegel: Simone Spuler, Clara Vázquez García, Thoralf Niendorf, Gabriele Schiattarella and Ana Pombo.

According to a survey conducted by the ‘Sozialwissenschaftliches Institut Schad’, the Max Delbrück Center is one of Berlin's best employers and training companies. A good 600 companies took part in the survey, and around 100 received the award – making them ‘Berlins Beste’.

The European Research Council awards an ERC Starting Grant to HI-TAC guest researcher Mahak Singhal. He will investigate how the lining of our blood vessels senses, anticipates, and responds to the circadian changes between day and night.

The American Heart Association has awarded its Excellence Award for Hypertension Research to Dominik Müller from the Max Delbrück Center. He is only the third European to be honored with this distinction from the oldest professional society in the U.S.