Award ceremony Lautenschläger Research Prize for Neurobiologist Hannah Monyer

Prof. Monyer’s research focuses on the molecular mechanisms that support synchronous neural network activities and underlie cognitive processes such as learning and remembering. “In this field, Hannah Monyer combines intelligent questions with highly innovative experimental approaches and does not shy away from expanding beyond the boundaries of her own discipline to uncover the fundamental secrets of neural networks. She can rightly be called a pioneer of modern systemic neuro and behavioural science anchored in molecular biology,” says Manfred Lautenschläger of the current prize winner. Prof. Monyer was instrumental in several groundbreaking and internationally highly visible discoveries, related in particular to inhibitory interneurons and projection neurons – the brain’s “master clocks”. She has recently turned her attention to the function of specific inhibitory interneurons in neural “circuits” that exhibit an effect all the way through to the behavioural level. 

Since 1999 Prof. Monyer has been Medical Director of the Division of Clinical Neurobiology at Heidelberg University Hospital – a cooperational division of the Medical Faculty Heidelberg, Heidelberg University, and the German Cancer Research Center. She studied medicine and earned her doctorate at Heidelberg University. She worked as a resident physician in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, subsequently joining the Department of Paediatric Neurology at the University Children’s Hospital in Lübeck. In 1986, Hannah Monyer joined Stanford University (USA) as a postdoctoral research fellow and three years later came to the Center for Molecular Biology at Heidelberg University. She received her authorisation to teach biochemistry in 1993, becoming an endowed professor the following year and establishing her own research group. In addition to other prestigious awards for her achievements, Prof. Monyer received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize from the German Research Foundation in 2004.

Paying tribute to Felix Joos, the winner of the junior researcher prize, Manfred Lautenschläger describes him as an “enormously productive young researcher, who with creativity, self-determination and technical flexibility is tackling major questions in theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics”. Prof. Joos recently attracted attention with his solution to the “Oberwolfach problem” (2018) and a paper on the “kissing number” (2019). His research in this field starts from the question of how closely equally large balls can be packed – not only in 3D containers like a box but in spaces of any dimension, what are called d-dimensional spaces. A central point here is how many balls can touch a single ball in the d-dimensional space. In connection with this “kissing number” Prof. Joos studies how great the difference is between the ideal and the least ideal ball packaging in the d-dimensional space. With his study of the lower barriers to the “kissing number” he has already developed innovative methods combining different tools from discrete mathematics and statistical physics.

Felix Joos studied mathematics at Ulm University, where he also submitted his dissertation. After research stays at the University of Birmingham (Great Britain) and the University of Hamburg, he joined Heidelberg University’s Institute for Computer Science in March of last year as a junior professor. Since 2019, Prof. Joos has headed a research group that is also funded by the Emmy Noether Programme of the German Research Foundation. He has already published numerous articles with cooperation partners from all over the world.