Beate Hoffmann received the prize for her diploma thesis “The Human glucagon-like peptide-1 Receptor: Expression, Renaturation and Functional Reconstitution in Nanodiscs”. Beate received a degree in Biochemistry at the Martin-Luther-Universität in Halle, and she worked for her diploma thesis in the laboratory of Dr. Peter Hanner at the Institut für Technische Biochemie. She has completed her doctoral work in the group of Volker Dötsch at the Universität Frankfurt.
Matthias Feige was awarded the prize for his dissertation “Folding and Assembly of Antibodies “, for which he worked from 2006 to 2009 in the laboratory of Professor Johannes Buchner at the Lehrstuhl für Biotechnologie of the TU München. Matthias was exceptionally successful, and he contributed to eleven publications, among others in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA and in Molecular Cell. He studied biochemistry at the TU München, and he continued with his work on antibodies as a postdoc in the group of Linda Hendershot at the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis (USA). Subsequently, he held position of a professor of cellular biochemistry at the TU München.
Christoph Giese received the prize for his doctoral thesis “A new single-step affinity purification system derived from type 1 pili of Escherichia coli“, performed from 2006 to 2011 in the laboratory of Professor Rudolph Glockshuber at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zurich. He developed a novel strategy for the purification and identification of heterooligomeric protein complexes, which is based on the extremely tight interactions between the subunits of bacterial pili. This strategy is highly promising and after publication in Angewandte Chemie received much attention. Christoph studied biochemistry at the Martin-Luther-Universität in Halle.