Using the donations by the Friends we are able to support young scientists, organize special lectures as well as award scientific discovery awards to name a few. In addition, we support outreach activities as well as the annual Night of Science, the Teaching Lab, the German Neuroscience Olympiad, our Max Planck Junior Scholars Program and the Bar of Science. You can read more about the activities of the Association and the MPI for Brain Research in our newsletters.
Scientific Discovery Awards (PhD and Postdoc Prizes)
The Scientific Discovery Awards recognize selected doctoral students and postdocs for their outstanding scientific contribution.
PhD Prize Laureates
2015 Georgi Tushev, PhD (Synaptic Plasticity Department) for "The local transcriptome in neurons" 2017 Manuel Berning, PhD (Connectomics Department) for "Automated analysis of large-scale 3D electron microscopy data from the cerebral cortex" 2018 Christoph Schanzenbächer, PhD (Synaptic Plasticity Deparment) for "Proteome remodeling in synaptic scaling" 2019 Alessandro Motta (Connectomics Department) for "Connectomic traces of learning" 2020 Caspar Glock, PhD (Synaptic Plasticity Department) for "Dscoveries of the regulation and translation of localized mRNAs in neurons" 2021 Claudia Fusco (Synaptic Plasticity) Department for "Dynamic exchange of ribosome proteins" 2022 Juan Luis Riquelme (Gjorgjieva Lab) and David Hain & Tatiana Flores Gallego (both Laurent Lab)
Postdoc Prize Laureates
2016 Mark Shein-Idelson, PhD (Neural Systems Departmetn) for "Reptilian Sleep" 2017 Beatriz Alvarez-Castelao, PhD (Synaptic Plasticity Department) for "Cell type-specific labelling of nascent proteins in vivo" 2018 Maria Antonietta Tosches, PhD (Neural Systems Department) for "scRNA sequencing of the reptilian brain and cortex evolution" 2019 Vidhya Rangaraju, PhD (Synaptic Plasticity Department) for "Local mitochondria powering synaptic plasticity" 2020 Jointly to Lorenz Fenk, PhD and Hiroaki Norimoto, PhD (Neural Systems Department) for "The involvment of the claustrum in non-REM sleep brain activity in lizards" 2021 Raunak Basu, PhD (Memory and Navigation Circuits Group) for "The discovery of brain's goal map"
Science Support Awards
The Science Support Awards recognize selected non-scientific personnel for their outstanding work performance.
Sciene Support Awards:
2021 Heiko Fernau (Facility Management) and Stefanie Kranz (Animal Facility) 2022 Regina Lamm (Admin) and Florian Müller (IT)
Hertie Foundation Lectures at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research