Awards for researchers from developing and transition countries

updated on 22 September 2020

One female and five male researchers will receive this year’s Georg Forster Research Awards, which are granted by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The award honours researchers from developing and transition countries who have earned international recognition for their research work and seek to solve development-related issues. The award winners are nominated by specialist colleagues from Germany and invited to establish or expand collaborative projects with them. Valued at €60,000 each, the Georg Forster Research Awards are financed by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The recipients of the 2020 Georg Forster Research Awards:

• Omar Azzaroni is a professor of physical chemistry at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata in Argentina. As a Georg Forster Research Award winner, he will work together with specialist colleagues from the Department of Materials Research at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt.
• Svetlana Baca is a professor of chemistry at the Academy of Sciences of Moldova in the Republic of Moldova. As a Georg Forster Research Award winner, she will collaborate with specialist colleagues at the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry at RWTH Aachen University.
• Belay Tessema Belay is a microbiologist and epidemiologist at the University of Gondar in Ethiopia. As a Georg Forster Research Award winner, he will work together with specialist colleagues from the   Institute of Clinical Immunology at the University of Leipzig Medical Center.
• Enrique La Marca is the founder and director of the Rescue of Endangered Venezuelan Amphibians (REVA) conservation center and was a professor at the Universidad de Los Andes in Mérida, Venezuela. The Georg Forster Research Award winner - a tropical ecologist - will collaborate with specialist colleagues from the Faculty of Regional and Environmental Sciences at Trier University.
• Ricardo Perez Montfort is a professor of history at Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social in Mexico. As a Georg Forster Research Award winner, he will work together with specialist colleagues from the Institute for Latin American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin.
• Abdolreza Simchi is a professor of engineering at Sharif University of Technology in Iran. He will work as a Georg Forster Research Award winner together with specialist colleagues from the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials in Bremen.

The Humboldt Foundation is currently accepting nominations for the next round of the Georg Forster Research Award. The closing date for nominations is 31 October 2020.

This research award is named after the naturalist, travel writer and journalist Georg Forster (1754–1794), a friend of Alexander von Humboldt.

(press release 18/2020)

Every year, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation enables more than 2,000 researchers from all over the world to spend time conducting research in Germany. The Foundation maintains an interdisciplinary network of well over 30,000 Humboldtians in more than 140 countries around the world – including 61 Nobel Prize winners.