Manfred Fuchs Award
In order to encourage young scientists and ensure that outstanding scientific achievements receive the recognition they deserve, Dr. Dr. h.c. Manfred Fuchs has established a research award to promote young scientists in Baden-Württemberg.
It has been awarded by the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences since 2015 and is endowed with 10,000 euros.
Who can be nominated?
The award is given to particularly qualified young scientists who are completing their postdoctoral qualifications in the humanities or who head a research group in the natural sciences and engineering and are generally preparing for a professorship. The award particularly honors young scientists who build bridges between different scientific cultures. Previous scientific achievements are evaluated in the assessment process.
The people nominated for the award should not be older than 40 years of age. If several candidates have contributed equally to the work, the award may be shared equally among them.
Who is allowed to make suggestions?
- all members of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences
- the management of all academic institutions at universities in Baden-Württemberg (rectorates, deaneries, executive directors, institute management)
- the management of all non-university research institutions in Baden-Württemberg (executive directors)
- Unsolicited applications are not accepted.
The prize founder
Manfred Fuchs was born in Mannheim in 1939 and studied business administration at what was then the Mannheim Business School. In 1963, Dr. Manfred Fuchs took over his father's company and expanded it into a global enterprise, Fuchs Petrolub SE(external link).
Manfred Fuchs is committed to a wide range of social projects and the arts in the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region.
He has been a member of the Friends of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences ( external link) since 2008 and has been involved there as a member of the board ever since.
The award winners
The prize was awarded for the first time in 2015. Since then, young scientists from a wide variety of fields have been honored.
All previous award winners:
| year | Name | Title |
| 2025 | Frederick, Pascal | Work on AI in materials science |
| 2024 | Posth, Cosimo | Field of work: Genetic reconstruction and dispersal history of early humans and modern human populations based on the analysis of DNA from prehistoric human remains. |
| 2023 | Kano, Fumihiro | Field of work: Animal behavior research, microbehavior of animals and humans |
| 2022 | Raffel, Simon | Field of work: Acute myeloid leukemia (AML), leukemia stem cell research |
| 2022 | Werther, Luke | Field of work: Diachronic approaches and comparative studies at the interface between archaeology, history, and geosciences, with a focus on the Middle Ages and early modern period |
| 2021 | Malang, Thomas | International networking activities of parliaments and parliamentarians |
| 2021 | Rehfeld, Kira | Global patterns of declining temperature variability from the Last Glacial Maximum to the Holocene |
| 2020 | Grundeken, Mark R. C. | The one God who is in all things. Ephesians 4:6 in light of ancient discourses on God and the world |
| 2020 | Stengel, Florian | Field of work: Dynamics of protein complexes and functional proteomics |
| 2019 | Böttcher, Thomas | Field of work: Virulence of pathogenic bacteria, development of new antibiotics, and investigation of chemical interactions between microorganisms |
| 2019 | Burkhardt, Julia | Learning from bees. Thomas of Cantimpré's Bonum universale de apibus as a collaborative project (analysis, edition, translation, commentary) |
| 2018 | Hamann, Hanjo | Field of work: research into the history of German justice from a legal linguistic, legal historical, and legal sociological perspective |
| 2017 | Noori, Hamid R. | A Multi-Scale Cerebral Neurochemical Connectome of the Rat Brain |
| 2016 | Cedar Tree, Carla | Geometric structures in general relativity |
| 2015 | Korbel, Jan O. | Self-regulation in the natural sciences – towards the integration of a normative methodology |
| 2015 | Molnár-Gábor, Fruzsina | Self-regulation in the natural sciences – towards the integration of a normative methodology |
Nomination deadline:
Annually March 1 - June 30
What needs to be submitted?
- Justification of the proposal, maximum two pages
- resume
- list of publications
- Award-worthy work or exposé on previous research achievements
The documents should be submitted as a single PDF file and sent to hadw[at]hadw-bw.de .
When will the decision be made?
The Academy will announce its decision at the beginning of the year. The winner and their mentor will be notified of the result in writing.
Do you have any questions?
You can reach us by phone at +49 (0)6221 54-3265 or by email at hadw[at]hadw-bw.de.
If you wish to send the documents by mail, please send them to:
Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Executive Secretariat
Karlstraße 4
69117 Heidelberg