Awards and Honors
Rowena Garcia was honored with the first Early Career Award (ECA) 2024 of the International Association for the Study of Child Language (IASCL). The Early Career Award honors researchers who have made an outstanding contribution in the field of child language acquisition.
The award recognizes both the contribution of Garcia's own research and her commitment to initiatives supporting researchers from the Global South. Her own research focuses on the acquisition and processing of Tagalog, a language that has been studied very little and differs considerably from more commonly studied languages. It provides important new information about how children learn to understand and produce sentences.
Dr. Rowena Garcia completed her doctorate in 2018 as part of the international doctoral program "International Doctorate for Experimental Approaches to Language and Brain" (IDEALAB), which was funded by the Universities of Groningen, Newcastle, Potsdam, Trento, and Macquarie University. She has held postdoctoral positions at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, the University of Potsdam, and Brown University. She is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of Developmental Psycholinguistics at the University of Potsdam and is a visiting professor in the Department of Speech Pathology at the University of the Philippines in Manila.
Dr. Maximilian Kleinert was awarded a Heisenberg Professorship at the University of Potsdam on April 1, 2024 and heads the Department of Molecular Physiology of Exercise and Nutrition at the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbrücke (DIfE). The Heisenberg Program of the German Research Foundation (DFG), with more than 600,000 EUR in funding, enables Kleinert to research the molecular and genetic links between metabolism in skeletal muscle and metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes.
Over the next five years, Kleinert will teach as a Heisenberg Professor at the University of Potsdam and head the Department of Molecular Physiology of Exercise and Nutrition at the DIfE. He is investigating how physical activity improves the insulin sensitivity of skeletal muscle, how skeletal muscle interacts with other organs, and what effect medium-chain fatty acids in the diet have on skeletal muscle and metabolic health.
The DFG's Heisenberg Professorship is one of the most highly endowed instruments for third-party funding in Germany. For five years, the researchers receive funding from the DFG for personnel and material expenses; in case of a positive evaluation, the professorship can be made permanent.
Prof. Dr. Julia Kraft, LL.M. (KU Leuven) from the Law Faculty at the University of Potsdam, together with Dr. Katharina Drechsler from the University of Cologne, received the Wolfgang Ritter Prize for 2024 worth 20,000 EUR. It is one of the most prestigious and most highly endowed prizes in the field of business administration and economics in Germany.
Julia Kraft has been Professor of Civil Law and Contract Design at the University of Potsdam since May 2023. She received the Wolfgang Ritter Prize for her habilitation thesis “Armut und Vertrag – Über den liberalen Wert eines sozialen Vertragsrechts” (Poverty and Contract – On the Liberal Value of a Social Contract Law). In her thesis, she investigates the role that contract law plays in the fight against poverty. The award ceremony took place in Bremen’s City Hall with Science and Research Senator Kathrin Moosdorf in attendance.
The Wolfgang Ritter Foundation promotes research and its institutions as well as early career researchers. It was founded in 1970 and has distributed well over ten million EUR to a wide variety of projects, award winners, and researchers since then.
Prof. Dr. Reinhold Kliegl was awarded the Supervisor Award of the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Sportpsychologie” (asp – Working Group for Sports Psychology). The scientist received the “Golden Hand of the asp” at its 56th annual conference in May 2024.
Reinhold Kliegl was nominated by doctoral students from the EMOTIKON project, which investigates physical fitness in children. The senior professor at the University of Potsdam has received awards for his life's work in science and is an honorary member of the German Psychological Society. In 2002, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize from the German Research Foundation.
The aim of the asp Supervisor Award is to recognize and raise the profile of excellent supervision of doctoral students and to raise awareness of the standards of high-quality supervision. In addition to methodological and content-related support, excellent supervision also includes appreciation of doctoral candidates and cooperation based on trust.
