Humboldt Foundation honours ecologist and psychiatrist for development-relevant research

Every year, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s Georg Forster Research Award honours internationally recognised researchers from developing countries and emerging economies working on topics relevant to development. The award winners are nominated by specialist colleagues in Germany and invited to establish and expand collaborations with them. Valued at EUR 60,000 each, the research award is financed by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The 2024 award winners:

Amy Theresa Austin is a professor at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. She explores the impact of climate change on decomposition processes and the nutrient cycle in natural and agricultural ecosystems. In particular, she focusses on the consequences of human influence, investigating, for example, how intensive agricultural use changes an ecosystem’s carbon cycle and thus endangers soil fertility. Her research delivers valuable strategies for sustainable land-use practices and dealing with the consequences of climate change. In urban environments, she studies the role played by green spaces in climate regulation. The Georg Forster Research Award winner will cooperate with specialist colleagues at the Leibniz Institute of Vegetable and Ornamental Crops (IGZ) at Großbeeren (Brandenburg).

Andre Russowsky Brunoni is a professor at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. One of his research interests focusses on the predictability and risk assessment of mental illness in order to be able to treat patients effectively in the first stage of the disease. A main aim of his work is to identify risk factors that increase the likelihood of mental illness, for example age, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and education. His research contributes to early, cost-effective therapies that are of crucial importance to improving healthcare in Brazil, the country with the highest rate of depression worldwide. In the context of the Georg Forster Research Award, he will cooperate with colleagues at the Clinic and Polyclinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at LMU Munich.

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 2024. 

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

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.