Prof. Dr Till Stephan
Science Funding Award 2025
Research area: Cell Biology, Super-resolution Light Microscopy
Research focus: Nanoscale organization of membrane-bound cell organelles, with a particular focus on how membrane architecture, lipid composition, and protein assemblies shape cellular membrane systems. Using advanced super-resolution microscopy techniques that overcome the diffraction limit of conventional light microscopy, his research aims to elucidate how inter-organelle contact sites regulate cellular energy homeostasis and how their dysregulation contributes to disease-relevant processes.
Dr Sina Steele
Science Funding Award 2025
Research area: Human Geography with a Focus on Mobility Research
Research focus: Within the context of the social-ecological transformation, questions about why car-dominant mobility practices are so persistent and how they could be changed have become particularly important. Sina’s junior research group focuses on understanding how transformation processes in transportation, as well as life events or social influences, are impacting the mobility of young people and how their voices can be amplified in these processes. The project investigates how young people are mobile in their daily lives and how active and independent mobility can be encouraged. Further, it examines the ideas young people have about the design of the routes and spaces they use and how these ideas can be better integrated into planning processes. Finally, it seeks to develop formats to enhance involvement of young people in mobility transition processes. The research actively involves young people as co-researchers within a transdisciplinary living lab.
Prof. Dr Natalie Welfens
Science Funding Award 2026
Research area: Political Sociology, Migration and Inequalities in the Digital Age
Research focus: New technologies, including artificial intelligence, are rapidly transforming migration and asylum systems across Europe – promising greater efficiency, faster procedures, and better integration outcomes. But too often, these innovations overlook the people at the heart of them: migrants as data subjects and frontline workers as data users. How can digitalisation make migration governance more inclusive? Natalie and her interdisciplinary research team at the C3S together with the International Rescue Committee Germany will examine technological transformations in migration and asylum governance and how to foster more inclusive and participatory approaches.
Dr Andrei Kuzhelev
Science Funding Award 2026
Research area: Biophysical Chemistry and Magnetic Resonance
Research focus: Liquid-State Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (DNP). Andrei’s research centers on using the DNP technique to enhance the sensitivity of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) in biological systems. By optimizing electron-to-nucleus polarization transfer, he aims to significantly improve the signal-to-noise ratio in NMR spectroscopy, enabling the observation of high-resolution structural dynamics in membranes, proteins and nucleic acids at a nanoliter scale under physiological conditions.
Dr Jeremy McCormack
Science Funding Award 2026
Research area: Geosciences, Ecogeochemistry, Palaeobiology
Research focus: Jeremy does research at the interface of palaeontology, ecology, anthropology-archaeology, and geochemistry. He uses the state-of-the-art (isotope) geochemical methods to study the diet and ecology of modern and fossil vertebrates. Chiefly among these novel methods is zinc isotope analysis of tooth bioapatite, the mineral phase of teeth. This allows him to reconstruct the trophic ecology of extinct animals on timescales exceeding 100 million years. Noteworthy is his work investigating shark ecology, like that of the iconic gigantic extinct Megalodon. Because diet is a key driver of evolution and a predictor of an animal’s extinction risk, understanding past trophic ecology, especially in relation to biotic crises greatly benefits conservation efforts today.
Dr Ana Rita Sá Leite Dias
Science Funding Award 2026
Research area: Neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics
Research focus: Ana Rita’s research focuses on one of the most puzzling features in language science: grammatical gender – the system behind the notorious German der/die/das that once drove Mark Twain to declare that gender makes “no sense”. Ana Rita explores the neural bases of grammatical gender, taking a holistic approach that spans acquisition in childhood, processing in native and second-language speakers, and the role of social context. Her work also examines the interplay between personality, emotion, and language across languages and populations. Beyond the laboratory, she is committed to underrepresented linguistic communities, with a particular interest in one of her own mother tongues, Galician.
Dr Sebastian Scheich
Science Funding Award 2026
Research area: Hematology/Oncology, Lymphoid Malignancies and Microbiome
Research focus: Sebastian’s research focuses on translational cancer research with two central objectives: understanding molecular signaling and identifying therapeutic vulnerabilities in lymphoid malignancies, and exploring the role of the microbiome in hematologic cancer patients. His lab uses cutting-edge technologies such as genome-wide CRISPR/Cas9 screens, functional proteomics, and super-resolution microscopy to decode oncogenic signaling in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and identify novel therapeutic targets. The microbiome program employs NGS-based sequencing, single-cell RNA sequencing, and immune cell profiling to uncover how microbial communities shape treatment responses and immune reconstitution.
Dr Nico Bast
Science Funding Award
JQYA Member 2024, Emmy Noether Program
Research area: Neuroscience, Psychiatry, and Psychotherapy
Research focus: Predicting Mental Health Development in Children. Utilizing early markers that can be assessed in children to define risk trajectories of transdiagnostic psychopathology.
Prof. Dr. Greta Wagner
Science Funding Award
JQYA Member 2024, Emmy Noether Program
Research area: Cultural sociology
Research focus: In the context of the multiple crises of recent years, questions about who is granted solidarity and who is excluded from selective solidarities have become particularly dynamic. Greta’s group investigates the symbolic boundaries of helping, both in the practices of helping others and in discourses about helping, deserving help, and (exclusive) solidarities.
Prof. Dr Eric J. N. Helfrich
Science Funding Award
JQYA Member 2023, Emmy Noether Programme
Research area: Natural Product Genomics
Research focus: Development of machine learning-based genome mining algorithms for the targeted identification of non-canonical natural product biosynthetic pathways in bacterial genomes, and characterization of natural product pathways.
Prof. Dr Maxim Bykov
JQYA Member 2023, ERC Starting Grant
Science Funding Award
Research area: Chemistry at Extreme Conditions
Research focus: Maxim’s group employs high-pressure techniques such as laser-heated diamond anvil cells and large-volume multianvil presses to synthesize novel materials. Pressure serves as an invaluable tool for characterizing fundamental interactions and processes, as well as for unlocking the potential of unexpected chemical compounds. Analogous to the way pressure transforms graphite into diamond, high-pressure methods can be used to create new materials with ultra-high hardness, high energy density, and unconventional physical properties. Maxim is exploring a wide range of compounds including new nitrides, oxides, and carbides – virtually every class of compounds holds possibilities for new discoveries.
Dr. Elena Bykova
Science Funding Award
JQYA Member 2023, Emmy Noether Programme
Research area: High-pressure crystallography, chemistry and mineralogy
Research focus: Behaviour of matter at extreme conditions, such as high pressures and temperatures, e.g. chemical and structural transformations in materials related to deep interiors of Earth and extra-terrestrial rocky planets.
Prof. Dr. Sebastian Eckart
Science Funding Award
JQYA Member 2023, ERC Starting Grant
JQYA Fellow 2022
Research area: Atomic Physics
Research focus: Sebastian is an experimental physicist and works in the field of atomic physics focusing on photo-ionization of single atoms and molecules by strong laser fields with tailored properties. Sebastian and his team use laser pulses with a duration on the order of a millionth of a billionth of a second (a femtosecond) and measure the produced particles (electrons and ions) in coincidence. Using this approach, Sebastian’s team investigates quantum phenomena such as tunneling, interference and entanglement on ultrafast time scales.
Dr. Anna Wanka
Science Funding Award
JQYA Member 2022, Emmy Noether Programme
Research area: Sociology of age and ageing
Research focus: Ageing and age constructions, social practices of un/doing age, life course transitions / retirement and the re/production of social inequalities across the life course, ageing in a digitized world as well as ageing and space.