Newly selected Humboldt Professors to receive up to €10 million in funding

Eight Humboldt Professors have been newly selected to strengthen Germany’s standing as a location for research. Thanks to financing provided through the Global Minds Initiative Germany programme, the previously maximum amount of award money has been doubled from €5 million to now up to €10 million per person. The funding can be used very flexibly, for example, to establish research teams or to pay for technical equipment or facilities. This increased funding offers researchers who are to use the award to move from another country to Germany optimal conditions for outstanding cutting-edge research. 

The interdisciplinary selection committee decided on 14 nominations from German universities. Eleven men and three women were nominated for the award.

The following individuals were selected to receive a Humboldt Professorship:

• Yong P. Chen is an internationally eminent researcher in the area of quantum and 2D materials. He conducts research along the interface between solid-state physics, materials sciences and quantum technology and is to switch to the University of Kassel. He is currently a professor at the Aarhus University in Denmark.
• The historian Daniel Jütte is known for his original work in Urban Humanities, a field located at the intersection between the humanities, urban studies and built environment. He was nominated by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). He is currently a professor at New York University, USA.
• Jonathan Kimmelman is a leading international authority in the field of bioethics. He is being called to the Berlin Institute of Health at the Charité (BIH) to strengthen its standing as a centre for ethical and transparent biomedicine. He is currently a professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
• By combining basic research and clinical medicine, Mathias Lichterfeld has conducted pioneering work for HIV research. He is to continue this work at the Heidelberg University. He is a professor and physician at Harvard Medical School and at two hospitals in Boston, USA.
• Shahar Mendelson is considered to be an outstanding mathematician who makes groundbreaking contributions to data science and the mathematics of machine learning. He was nominated by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. He is currently a professor at Texas A&M University in College Station, USA.
• With his innovative research, Michał Pilipczuk forges links between discrete mathematics, algorithm design and logic. At the Technical University of Darmstadt he is to set up and head a new centre for the mathematical foundations of computer science. He is currently a professor at the University of Warsaw, Poland.
• Nicholas Taylor is an internationally renowned structural biologist whose research focus is complex molecular machines. While at Saarland University, he aims to support the development of the latest molecular imaging technologies. He is a professor at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
• An eighth researcher was also selected. She requests that she not be named at the present time.

The new award winners will now embark on appointment negotiations with the German universities that nominated them. They will receive their awards in May 2027 following the successful conclusion of their negotiations. Each award comes with up to €10 million to finance the professorship for the first seven years. Universities submitting nominations for the award also include a plan for how they will finance the professorship beyond this time on a long-term basis.

Alexander von Humboldt Professorships are awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and financed by Germany's Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space.

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 63 Nobel Prize winners.