Intercultural group of young scientists celebrating on board of a ferry
© Staatsministerium Baden-Württemberg / Uli Regenscheidt

THE LÄND awards its top researchers

The academy of sciences of the state of Baden-Württemberg honors seven young scientists from the German Southwest for their pioneering work. Among them are three inernational researchers.

Baden-Württemberg is not only home to talented junior researchers who do groundbreaking work in their field, it’s also a state which supports its talents to advance in their careers. With a total value of 70,000 euros, the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften (the academy of sciences of the state of Baden-Württemberg), donated seven different prizes in 2023.

That three of these prizes were given to international researchers is little surprising: THE LÄND and its research landscape are very international, around 16 per cent of the population have a non-German passport, which makes Baden-Württemberg the German state with the third-highest immigration from abroad (read more about THE LÄND’s internationality here).

The following international researchers were awarded:

  • The „Karl-Freudenberg-Preis“ went to the Belgian Dr. Sylvain Delaunay for his work in which he reveals a new strategy for preventing the spread of cancer cells. Sylvian Delaunay works as a Postdoc at the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ) since 2019 after receiving his doctorate degree in molecular medicine in Belgium.
     
  • Dr. Fumihiro Kano from Japan, junior group leader at the Center for the Advanced Study of Collective Behavior at the University of Konstanz received the „Manfred-Fuchs-Preis“. The prize supports scientists who are preparing for a professorship. Fumihiro Kano studies animal social cognition in naturalistic situations, mainly through observation of gaze, as the direction of attention reveals a great deal of mental process in both human and nonhuman animals. He uses state-of-the-art technologies such as infrared imaging and computer vision.
     
  • Awarded for the first time, the „Hector Stiftung-Preis“ in the field of computer science by the Hector foundation went to the Italian scientist Dr. Francesco Locatello for his work on the subject of „disentangled representations“. The Senior Applied Scientist at Amazon Web Services (AWS) received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from ETH Zurich (2020) supervised by Gunnar Rätsch (ETH Zurich) and Bernhard Schölkopf (Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen).

To see the full list of awarded prizes, click here.

Tip: Do you want to boost your career as an international scientist further? Check out funding opportunities in Baden-Württemberg.

Author: Leonie Rörich