New Alexander von Humboldt Professors selected

The selected individuals conduct research in the areas of human rights, mathematics, corpus linguistics and quantum materials. The award winners are to use Germany’s most valuable international research award to work for an extended period in Germany. They come from research institutions in the USA and the United Kingdom and will be relocating to Bielefeld, Dresden and Erlangen-Nuremberg.

An Alexander von Humboldt Professorship, which comes with up to €5 million in funding, offers not only optimal financial conditions but also maximum flexibility for conducting leading-edge research in Germany. The new award winners will now embark on appointment negotiations with the German universities that nominated them. They will receive their awards in 2024 following the successful conclusion of their negotiations. 

The following researchers have been selected to receive a Humboldt Professorship:

• The mathematician David Damanik, currently a professor at Rice University in Houston, Texas, USA, is slated to switch to Bielefeld University.
• Michaela Mahlberg,  a linguist and specialist for digital humanities, was nominated by FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg. She is presently a professor at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.
• The legal scholar and human rights expert Eva Pils was selected for a Humboldt Professorship at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg as well. She has been a professor at King’s College London, United Kingdom, to date.
• Leslie M. Schoop, a chemist at Princeton University, USA, was nominated by TU Dresden together with the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids.

During its meeting in October, the Selection Committee took decisions on 11 nominations. In addition, the virologist Florian Krammer was selected for the University of Marburg. He has however decided to stay at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA. The first selection round for the 2024 Humboldt Professorship at which five award winners were selected was held in spring 2023.

Alexander von Humboldt Professorships are awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and financed by Germany's Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

(Press release 33/2023)

Every year, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation enables more than 2,000 researchers from all over the world to spend time conducting research in Germany. The Foundation maintains an interdisciplinary network of well over 30,000 Humboldtians in more than 140 countries around the world – including 61 Nobel Prize winners.