Press release: University honours members for special activities and achievements
No. 53/2010 – 9th March 2010
Prizes from the Foundation Council in 2009 – total value of 17,500 euros
Each year, the Foundation Council of the Georg-August-University Göttingen Public Law Foundation distinguishes members of the Georgia Augusta for special activities and achievements at the university. This evening, the Chairman of the Foundation Council, Dr Wilhelm Krull, will award the prizes for 2009 at a special awards ceremony. These awards each carry a prize of 2,500 euros and are being presented this year in the categories "Science and Publicity" and "Outstanding Publications by Young Talent". A special prize for outstanding commitment was already awarded back in January. It was originally intended to hold the awards ceremony on 3rd December 2009, within the context of the Göttingen University Speech.
The prize category "Science and Publicity" honours initiatives that convey scientific working processes and new knowledge to the public. The organisers of the physics show "Zauberhafte Physik – Von schwebenden Schiffen und rauchenden Ringen" (Magical physics – of floating ships and smoking rings) will be recognised in this category. Project manager Prof. Dr Arnulf Quadt will accept the certificates on behalf of the organising team. The Foundation Council believes that the physics show demonstrates the appeal of research-based learning and serves as an excellent example of conveying scientific knowledge to the public.
The evolutionary psychologist Dr Bernhard Fink will be honoured in the same category. He is being recognised for successfully sharing with the public his scientific findings on the subject of physical attraction and human choice of partners. Dr Fink spearheads an Emmy Noether Research Group of young scientists at the University of Göttingen's Johann-Friedrich-Blumenbach-Institute for Zoology & Anthropology. The German Research Foundation presented the group's work as part of a ten-episode series on its website DFG Science TV.
The Foundation Council is awarding four prizes for Outstanding Publications by Young Talent. At the Institute of Microbiology and Genetics, Dr Özgür Bayram deciphered how light and darkness control different cellular processes of mould fungi, including the production of carcinogenic toxins. His research results were published in summer 2008 in the journal "Science".
In the same issue of "Science", Dr Oliver Lange and Dr Nils-Alexander Lakomek published the results of their research at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen. The team of these two young scientists gained new insights into the protein ubiquitin by conducting a variety of experiments and simulations. Ubiquitin is part of a sophisticated "recycling system" that breaks down damaged or worn-out proteins into their basic components and reuses them.
A further award for young talent will go to the literary scholar Dr Sabine Zufelde. In her dissertation "Comment savoir? – Comment dire?", she develops a typology for metafictional narrative techniques and researches how they function in three novels by the French author Claude Simon. Her text analysis greatly complements the current interpretation of these novels and thereby partially fills the gaps of French literature studies in comparison to its English and German counterparts.
The Foundation Council's special prize was awarded to the Italian lecturer Dr Ilva Fabiani for her outstanding commitment to innovation and the improvement of teaching at the Institute of Romance Philology. Students had nominated Dr Fabiani for the special prize, as she had demonstrated an outstanding commitment to building up and developing the specialist areas of Language Practice and Regional Studies on the Italian courses, as well as campaigning for the improvement of the infrastructure.
Dr Wilhelm Krull announced that, in future, the Foundation Council intends to honour outstanding commitment in teaching in a separate category. He invited the university's students in particular to put forward their suggestions.