Science award of the Hector Founda­tion II

for profes­sors from Heidel­berg and Saarbrücken

HEIDELBERG/WEINHEIM. The new awardees of the Hector Science Award explore the vastness of the universe and tiny molecules, respec­tively. In 2015 the prize was awarded to Prof. Dr. Eva Grebel (Univer­sity of Heidel­berg) and Prof. Dr. Dr. Thomas Lengauer (Max-Planck-Insti­tute for Infor­mat­ics Saarbrücken).

Grebel, profes­sor of Astron­omy at the Univer­sity of Heidel­berg, is one of the leading researchers in the field of galaxy evolu­tion. As a pioneer in the new research field "galac­tic archae­ol­ogy" she uses age, movements and compo­si­tion of stars as fossil witnesses of the evolu­tion of near galax­ies and the Milky Way. She inves­ti­gates star forma­tion and heavy-element enrich­ments as well as the role of fusion processes with smaller galax­ies and dark matter.

Lengauer is direc­tor of the Max-Planck-Insti­tute of Infor­mat­ics in Saarbrücken and honorary profes­sor at the Univer­sity of the Saarland. Since the nineties he has contributed signif­i­cantly to setting up bioin­for­mat­ics as a scien­tific disci­pline. Today, his major fields of research are protein struc­ture and function predic­tion (the latter partly based on gene expres­sion data) and compu­ta­tional drug screen­ing and design. Further­more, he aims to improve methods in bioin­for­mat­ics to contribute to the under­stand­ing, diagno­sis and treat­ment of diseases.