German Physicist Viola Priesemann Awarded ALLEA’s 2024 Madame de Staël Prize
ALLEA is proud to announce that German physicist and Board Member of the German Young Academy (“Die Junge Akademie”), Viola Priesemann, has been awarded the 2024 Madame de Staël Prize for European Values in recognition of her remarkable scientific achievements in the field of physics, her exceptional leadership, and her profound commitment to fostering a coordinated European response during the pandemic.
Prof Dr Viola Priesemann is a Board Member of “Die Junge Akademie”, professor of Physics at the Georg-August University and group leader at the Max-Planck-Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organisation in Göttingen. She is a member of the Board of the Campus Institute for Data Science, the Cluster of Excellence ‘Multiscale Bioimaging’, the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Her research focuses on living and artificial neural networks, carving out the basic mechanisms of self-organisation, learning, and efficient coding.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, she brought together and coordinated a transdisciplinary team of researchers to develop coordinated mitigation strategies. This team published several papers in The Lancet, including a practicable, transdisciplinary ‘Action Plan for Pan-European Defense against new SARS-CoV-2 variants.’ Within integrating researchers from small countries and disciplines this endeavor reflects the very values of European unity, transdisciplinary research, and the promotion of an open and inclusive science advancement in Europe.
The selection committee felt that Priesemann’s unwavering dedication to fostering an environment in which interdisciplinary research can flourish and the advancement pan-European cooperation in science, policy, and public health during a global crisis were both outstanding in their own right, as well as complementary to ALLEA’s own mission of facilitating scientific collaboration across borders and disciplines.
“The jury wholeheartedly agreed to award Viola Priesemann with the 2024 Madame de Staël Prize in recognition of her exceptional scientific leadership and dedication to fostering European collaboration. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Prof Priesemann brought together a team of researchers, from various countries and diverse disciplines, to coordinate mitigation strategies, resulting in several papers, including a practicable ‘Action Plan for Pan-European Defense against new SARS-CoV-2 variants.’ Her work reflects the very values embodied in the Prize – of promoting science as a global public good, facilitating scientific collaboration across borders and disciplines, and strengthening the impact of science in society,” said Paweł Rowiński, President of ALLEA and chair of the Madame de Staël Prize Jury.
