Dorothea Erxleben Awards 2021 – two prices for scientists of the the RU 5042 miTarget
Dorothea-Erxleben-Preisträgerinnen 2021, von links nach rechts: Dr. Julia Pagel, Prof. Dr. Petra Bacher, Dr. Corinna Bang, © C. Kloodt / Exzellenzcluster PMI, Uni Kiel
On 30th August, 2021 the Cluster of Excellence PMI awards three highly endowed Dorothea Erxleben Female Investigator Awards (1x 100,000 Euros, 2x 50,000 Euros) to support its female scientists in the field of inflammation research. Two of the awardees are members of the RU 5042 miTarget “The microbiome as therapeutic target in inflammatory bowel disease”: Prof. Dr. Petra Bacher and Dr. Corinna Bang. The third one comes from the University of Lübeck: Dr. Julia Pagel.
The award has been endowed for the first time within the previous Cluster of Excellence „Inflammation at Interfaces“ in 2017. It is entitled after Dorothea Christiane Erxleben, who at the middle of the 19th century gained as first women in Germany her doctoral degree and worked as medical doctor.
Professor Petra Bacher from the Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology (IKMB) and the Institute of Immunology at Kiel University (CAU) and the University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH), Campus Kiel, is awarded the price endowed with 100,000 Euros. She will investigate the impact of pre-existing memory T-cells and the immunological age on the quality of T-cell responses under a SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and how this influences its efficacy.
Since July 2018 she leads the Junior Research Group “Intestinal Immune Regulation” at the IKMB and helds one of the Schleswig-Holstein Junior Excellence Chairs. Within the RU 5042 she is together with Prof. Andre Franke principle investigator of project 1: Early microbiome changes and its antigenic potential in individuals at high-risk for inflammatory bowel diseases.
Dr. Corinna Bang is Post-doc at Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology of CAU and UKSH. She gains funding of 50,000 Euros. Within her project she will analyze the functional composition of the gut and the oral microbiome of humans with multiple sclerosis and find out which potential influences their composition has on the pathogenesis of this disease.
Corinna is head of the microbiome laboratory at the IKMB and has a strong expertise in the field of microbiome research. As such she is also involved in project 1.
Both women serve a role model for the female junior researchers of the RU 5042. Congratulations and success for your research project funded by the awards.
Here you can find the press release of the cluster.