Dr. h.c. Hans-Werner Hector, Prof. Anna Wienhard und Prof. Christian Haass (f.l.) © Marco Schilling
30. January 2023
Hector Science Award 2022

Prof. Dr. Anna Wienhard and Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Chris­t­ian Haass receive the Science Award of the Hector Foundation

The Hector Founda­tion II honors the outstand­ing research achieve­ments of the two scien­tists in the fields of mathe­mat­ics and cell biology by present­ing the Hector Science Award to Anna Wienhard and Chris­t­ian Haass.

Anna Wienhard is one of the world's leading mathe­mati­cians in the field of differ­en­tial geome­try. She is Direc­tor at the Max Planck Insti­tute for Mathe­mat­ics in the Sciences in Leipzig. For Anna Wienhard, the inter­ac­tions of mathe­mat­ics with theoret­i­cal physics, in partic­u­lar, the study of quantum field theories, and appli­ca­tions of geomet­ric and topolog­i­cal methods in data analy­sis and machine learn­ing play an impor­tant role.

Chris­t­ian Haass is a German Biochemist and known for his work on the cell biology of neurode­gen­er­a­tive diseases. He is a Profes­sor for Metabolic Biochem­istry at the Ludwig-Maxim­il­ians-Univer­sität München und Speaker of  the German Center for Neurode­gen­er­a­tive Diseases (DZNE) — Munich. Together with an inter­dizipli­nary team he uncov­ered the molec­u­lar mecha­nisms of Alzheimer's disease and identi­fied target molecules for thera­peu­tic treatment.

The Hector Science Award ceremony took place on Friday, January 27, 2023 at the Hotel Europäis­cher Hof in Heidel­berg. Founder Dr. h.c. Hans-Werner Hector welcomed the two new award winners to the circle of now 28 Hector Fellows. As Horst-Bodo Schauer, board member of the Founda­tion, explained, in the future two people will be awarded the Hector Science Award each year in order to ensure the sustain­able devel­op­ment of the Hector Fellow Academy, in which the award winners are jointly commit­ted to inter­dis­ci­pli­nary top-level research and the promo­tion of young scien­tists in Germany.

With the Hector Science Award, the Hector Founda­tion II annually honors outstand­ing scien­tists from German univer­si­ties and research insti­tu­tions. The awardees become members of the Hector Fellow Academy.