HPI PhD Award, HPI Postdoc Award and Mobility Grants
The HPI presents this year's HPI PhD Award, the HPI Postdoc Award and the new HPI Mobility Grants.
Every year, the Board of Directors of the Heinrich-Pette-Institute presents the PhD and Postdoc Award, each worth 500 euros, to the author of the most successful first publication of the previous year. With this award, the HPI wants to emphasize the high value of young researchers at the institute and promote scientific excellence.
This year's PhD Award goes to Dr. Annika Niehrs and her publication "A subset of HLA-DP molecules serve as ligands for the natural cytotoxicity receptor NKp44", which was published in the journal "Nature Immunology" in 2019. In it, a direct interaction between the activating NK cell receptor NKp44 and a number of class II HLA molecules is demonstrated. Dr. Annika Niehrs successfully completed her PhD in the HPI department "Virus Immunology" in 2019 and continues her research at HPI as a postdoctoral fellow.
The Postdoc Award 2020 is presented to Dr. Glória Martrus Zapater for her publication "CD49a Expression Identifies a Subset of Intrahepatic Macrophages in Human", which appeared in the high-ranking journal "Frontiers in Immunology" in 2019. The publication analyses and compares a subset of human intrahepatic macrophages.
In addition to the PhD and Postdoc Awards, the mobility grants for 2020 are presented:in
Sigurður Rafn Þorkelsson, PhD student in the HPI Research Department "Structurell Cell Biology of Viruses" has the opportunity for a research stay in the laboratory of Prof. Maya Topf at the Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology in Birkbeck at the University of London to learn new skills in atomic modeling.
Tian Bai, PhD student in the Research Department "Viral Zoonoses - One Health" receives a mobility grant to visit the laboratory of Prof. Shu Yuelong at the School of Public Health (Shenzhen), Sun Yat-sen University in China to study sex-dependent host factors that have an influence on the pathogenicity of the influenza 1 virus or the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2).
The PhD Award, the Postdoc Award and the mobility grants are made possible by the support of the Stiftung zur Bekämpfung neuroviraler Erkrankungen (Foundation for Combating Neuroviral Diseases) and the Ferdinand Bergen Foundation.
