Award Astrophysicist at Universität Heidelberg Receives Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize
12 June 2024
The most important award for young researchers in Germany goes to Dr Dominika Wylezalek
Astrophysicist Dr Dominika Wylezalek, a scientist at the Centre for Astronomy of Heidelberg University (ZAH), has been awarded the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize of the German Research Foundation (DFG). It pays tribute to her research studies on the development of galaxies and the role played by supermassive black holes at their centres. Dr Wylezalek, with her Emmy Noether junior research group, is based at the Institute for Astronomical Computing, which belongs to the ZAH. DFG Secretary General Dr Heide Ahrens presented the award.
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The Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize, worth 200,000 euros in each case, is the most important award in Germany for early-career researchers. The prize money can be used over a period of up to three years for further research work. The award is intended to support recipients in continuing their scientific career. It acknowledges an autonomous profile and research results that enrich the specialist community in such a way that the researchers are expected to achieve a top performance in future, too. Dr Wylezalek is one of the ten prize-winners – four women and six men – selected for 2024.
In her research, Dr Wylezalek deals with the physical processes that influence the formation and evolution of galaxies. Using spectroscopic measurements, she studies how active galactic nuclei – that is, galactic cores (quasars) fed by supermassive black holes – impact on the development of their host galaxies and their galactic environment. Dr Wylezalek’s observations help us to understand how galaxies in the early universe melted into the cosmic web we see today. For her contributions to observational astrophysics, the scientist – who has headed the Emmy Noether Junior Research Group “Galaxy Evolution and AGN” at Heidelberg University since 2020 – has already been honoured with the MERAC Prize of the European Astronomical Society and the Ludwig Biermann Award of the German Astronomical Society.
The Heinz Maier-Leibnitz prizes were awarded this year in Berlin on 4 June. Besides the DFG General Secretary and DFG Vice-President Prof. Dr Peter H. Seeberger, other speakers included Prof. Dr Sabine Döring, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and – on behalf of the Joint Science Conference – Katharina Fegebank, Senator for Science and Research in Hamburg.