Humboldtian to receive Leibniz Prize

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation would like to extend its warmest congratulations to the newly selected winners of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize! The ten researchers selected to receive a 2020 Leibniz Prize from the German Research Foundation (DFG) include one of the Humboldt Foundation’s funding recipients: the Max Planck Research Award winner Markus Reichstein.

Markus Reichstein (47) is being “singled out for his contributions in the area of data-driven research on the connection between climate and the biosphere and, in particular, on the interaction between terrestrial carbon and water cycles”, the DFG noted in its statement. Markus Reichstein is a Director and Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena. He is head of the Biogeochemical Integration Department there.
In 2013 he received the Max Planck Research Award − the research award jointly granted by the Humboldt Foundation and the Max Planck Society − for his research into the “influence of climate change on ecosystems”. He shared this award with Christopher B. Field. Just this October Reichstein, together with his international team, was awarded one of the coveted ERC Synergy Grants which he will use to improve climate models and the analysis and interpretation of Earth system data. This work will involve combining machine learning processes with physical models of the atmosphere and land.
Reichstein was a guest at the 9th Bonn Humboldt Award Winners’ Forum held by the Humboldt Foundation in October. Here he gave a paper on “Ecosystem function and climate”. In commemoration of Humboldt’s 250th birthday, this year’s Forum was dedicated to the environmental sciences.

The 2020 Leibniz Prizes, valued at €2.5 million each, will be presented to the ten award winners next March in Berlin.

 

Further information

• Max Planck Award Winners 2013
• Press release of the DFG