New Alexander von Humboldt Professors selected

An Alexander von Humboldt Professorship which comes with up to €5 million in funding offers not only optimal financial conditions but also maximum flexibility for conducting leading-edge research in Germany. The recently selected award winners are to use Germany’s most valuable international research award to work for an extended period at a German university. 

The new award winners will now embark on appointment negotiations with the German universities that nominated them. They will receive their awards in 2023 following the successful conclusion of their negotiations.

The following individuals were selected to receive a Humboldt Professorship:

• The computer scientist Samarjit Chakraborty will move to the University of Passau. He previously was a professor at the University of North Carolina, USA. 
• The quantum optics expert​​​​​​​ Dirk Englund from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, was nominated by the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light.
• The Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz nominated the bioinformatician Hanna Kokko from the University of Zurich.
• The developmental psychologist​​​​​​​ Tina Malti will be leaving the University of Toronto, Canada, and moving to Leipzig University.
• Edvardas Narevicius, an expert for ultra-low temperature chemistry at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, was successfully nominated by TU Dortmund University.
• The neuroscientist and Nobel Prize winner​​​​​​​ Thomas Südhof, who currently works at Stanford University, USA, received an offer from Charité Berlin (Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin).
• Heike Vallery, who conducts research in the area of automation technology and mechatronics at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, will be moving to RWTH Aachen University.

Additional funding will be available until the year 2024 for Humboldt Professorships in the field of artificial intelligence. These Humboldt Professorships can also focus on the societal, legal and ethical aspects of artificial intelligence. The following researchers will receive a Humboldt Professorship for Artificial Intelligence:

• André Platzer, an expert for theoretical computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA, was nominated by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).
• The mathematician Thomas Strohmer from the University of California, Davis, USA, will be called as a professor to the University of Cologne.
• Ingmar Weber, who works in the field of Computational Social Science at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar, was nominated by Saarland University.

One more researcher was selected for a Humboldt Professorship for Artificial Intelligence but has instead accepted an offer to stay at her present research institute. During its meeting in April, the Selection Committee took decisions on 18 nominations. The second selection round for the 2023 Humboldt Professorships will be held in autumn 2022. Humboldt Professorships are awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and financed by Germany's Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Further information about the award winners is available here.

(Press release 17/2022)