Sofja Kovalevskaja Award For Dr. Jan-Erik Siemens - Investigating How Mammals Maintain Constant Body Temperature

Main Category: Biology / Biochemistry
Also Included In: Neurology / Neuroscience;  Medical Students / Training
Article Date: 26 Nov 2008 - 2:00 PDT

email to a friend   printer friendly   view / write opinions   rate article

The biochemist and neurobiologist Dr. Jan-Erik Siemens is one of eight junior researchers to receive this year's Sofja Kovalevskaja Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (AvH). The award stipend will enable the researcher to return to Germany next year after four years as postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, USA, in order to establish a research group at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch. The award was presented to the young scientists on Tuesday, November 25, 2008, in Berlin.

Dr. Siemens investigates how mammals, and thus humans, manage to maintain a constant body temperature of around 37 degrees Celsius. The molecular basis of temperature regulation will be a focus of his research at the MDC.

Dr. Siemens was born in Schleswig, Germany, and studied biochemistry at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. After receiving his doctorate in 2004 from the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, Switzerland, he went to the U.S.

Dr. Siemens is the second recipient of the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award to join the MDC. In 2002, Dr. Michael Gotthardt received the award and returned from the U.S. to Germany. He now holds a joint professorship at the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and at the MDC.

With the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award, the foundation seeks to attract successful top-rank junior researchers from all over the world to spend time researching in Germany. The researchers receive up to 1.65 million euros over a five-year period in order to set up their own research projects at an institute of their choice in Germany.

The award is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and was conferred for the first time in 2002. It is named after the Russian mathematician Sofja Kovalevskaja (1850-1891) who studied mathematics as a private student in Heidelberg and Berlin and obtained her doctorate from the University of Göttingen. She became the first woman in Europe to hold a professor's chair at Stockholm University, Sweden.

A photo of Dr. Jan Siemens is available on the Internet at:
http://www.mdc-berlin.de/en/news/2008/index.html

Barbara Bachtler
Press and Public Affairs
Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch
Robert-Rössle-Str. 10¸13125 Berlin, Germany

http://www.humboldt-foundation.de