Congratulations to IWR Member Prof. Dr. Joacim Rocklöv for receiving Germany’s best-endowed international research prize. Swedish epidemiologist Joachim Rocklöv (prize-winner in 2022) does research at Heidelberg University as Professor for Artificial Intelligence in the Researching of Climate-Sensitive Infectious Diseases. The prizes will be presented by Federal Research Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger at a ceremony with all the prize-winners from 2020 to 2022, after a break caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The professorship, worth up to five million euros, is awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

The cross-disciplinary research by Prof. Rocklöv is based at the Heidelberg Institute of Global Health of the Medical Faculty Heidelberg and, at the same time, at the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing – a central research institution at Heidelberg University. Previously based at Umeå University (Sweden), epidemiologist, mathematician and statistician Joacim Rocklöv uses his professorship at Ruperto Carola to work on how to use methods of artificial intelligence, particularly machine learning, and of data science in order to gain a new understanding of the spread of infectious diseases. The aim is to develop new strategies for timely and more effective interventions, for example in the context of zoonoses and pandemic preparedness. The research will give special consideration to the study of the impacts of climatic and environmental changes on global health. For field research and causal studies, Prof. Rocklöv collaborates closely with IWR Member Prof. Dr. Dr. Till Bärnighausen, director of the Heidelberg Institute of Global Health. As the prize-winner of 2016, Prof. Bärnighausen likewise received a Humboldt Professorship.

Eligible for nomination for the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship are researchers from abroad who have an internationally leading position in their field. With support from the award they are expected to make a sustainable academic contribution through their research works to the international competitiveness of Germany as research location.

[Press Release Heidelberg University]

Congratulation to Dr. Ganna Gryn’ova, head of the Computational Carbon Chemistry group at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) and IWR Junior Research Group Leader st Heidelberg University, on being awarded a starting grant from the European Research Council (ERC). The ERC will fund Dr. Gryn’ova's research on functional organic materialswith approximately €1.5 million which will be issued over a five-year period.

Functional organic materials possess myriad chemical and physical properties that are valuable for environmental remediation, green catalysis, drug delivery, and more. The Computational Carbon Chemistry (CCC) group uses state-of-the-art computational chemistry to explore and develop these materials. Thus far, the team has laid the groundwork for accurately and efficiently simulating two-dimensional organic materials and their interactions with small molecular targets. Building on this work, the new ERC-funded PATTERNCHEM project will exploit the topological fingerprints of novel tantalizing materials, such as graphene derivatives, covalent organic frameworks, and hyperbranched polymers. Ultimately, this line of research aims to establish unconventional ways of designing and optimizing functional organic materials while targeting a given scientific or industrial application.

Hailing from Ukraine, Ganna Gryn’ova earned her PhD in computational chemistry at the Australian National University in 2014, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. In April 2019, she established the CCC research group at HITS. Among other accolades, Dr. Gryn’ova has received a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship (2016) from the European Commission and is a member of the prestigious Elisabeth Schiemann Kolleg (Elisabeth Schiemann College) (as of 2021). She is also a co-investigator for the German Research Council’s Sonderforschungsbereich (Collaborative Research Center) “SFB1249: N-heteropolycycles as functional materials” as well as a member of the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing (IWR) at Heidelberg University.

[Full Press Release HITS][Press Release Heidelberg University][Website Dr. Ganna Gryn’ova]