“The Humboldt Professorship is an investment in the future”

In Berlin on Tuesday evening, the Federal Minister for Research, Technology and Space, Dorothee Bär, and the President of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Robert Schlögl, conferred the Alexander von Humboldt Professorships on seven leading international researchers. The new Humboldt Professors were nominated by German universities and are relocating from abroad to Berlin, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Freiburg, Göttingen, Karlsruhe and Tübingen. The award currently comes with €5 million for researchers in experimental disciplines and €3.5 million for those working in theoretical disciplines.

Humboldt Professorship: a structural investment

“The Humboldt Professorship recognises academic excellence, the award winners’ achievements to date and those that are still to be expected: It is a very good investment in the future,” the Foundation’s President Robert Schlögl emphasised. In his address he underscored the sustainable, structural impact of the Humboldt Professorship. It helps universities to strengthen their strategic position and enhance their profile in the international arena. “So far, 135 Humboldt Professors have been appointed at German universities. And of these, a good 90 percent continued working in Germany after funding came to an end. They become a hub for excellent, international, interdisciplinary research.”

Academic freedom is not a law of nature

Academic freedom, said Schlögl, being a prerequisite for unconditional enquiry that was practised in Germany, was not a law of nature. “We must fortify democracy. We need far-reaching measures in the political sphere and academic institutions to strengthen our science system and make it resilient to attack.”

The best of the best for innovations in Germany

At the award ceremony, Federal Research Minister, Dorothee Bär, said, “Science and research are an inexhaustible source of ideas for innovations and technologies that make our lives better. This is the essence of the High-Tech Agenda Germany for which we need the best of the best in science. And this is what the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship stands for. I should like to congratulate this year’s award winners on their outstanding achievements. They have chosen to come here from five different countries on four different continents. This shows that, internationally, Germany is an extremely attractive research location. With 80,000 international scientists and scholars, we are already the second most important destination after the United States worldwide. Through the Global Minds Initiative, we are ensuring Germany will remain an attractive destination and secure haven of academic freedom.”

Alexander von Humboldt Professorship: award winners

• Christopher Barner-Kowollik, Chemistry, is relocating from Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, to Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).
• Sebastian Deindl, Structural Biology, is relocating from Uppsala University, Sweden, to the University of Tübingen.
• Simon Elsässer, Cell Biology, is relocating from the Karolinska Institutet in Solna, Sweden, to the University of Freiburg.
• Sahika Inal, Bioengineering, is relocating from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia, to Dresden University of Technology and the Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research Dresden.
• Reinhard Maurer, Theoretical Chemistry, is relocating from the University of Warwick, United Kingdom, to the University of Göttingen and the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences.
• Michael Moehler, Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE), is relocating from Virginia Tech, United States, to HHU Düsseldorf.
• Michael Weber, Economics, is relocating from the University of Chicago, United States, to ESMT Berlin (European School of Management and Technology).

The Alexander von Humboldt Professorship

The Humboldt Professorship, financed by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space, brings eminent international researchers of all disciplines to German universities. It provides optimal financial conditions and maximum flexibility for leading-edge research in Germany. In addition to the candidates’ outstanding scientific and academic qualifications, the universities’ concepts are decisive as they should offer the researchers and their teams long-term prospects in Germany.
Thanks to funding from the Global Minds Initiative Germany, the award amount for the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship will be increased to up to €10 million. Moreover, the standard sponsorship period will be extended to seven years.

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.