This year the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) is once again honouring six young researchers with the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize. The decision was made at the meeting of the DFG's Executive Committee on 25 March. The prizes, worth 16,000 euros each, will be awarded in Bonn by DFG president Professor Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker and Wolf-Michael Catenhusen, State Secretary to the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium fr Bildung und Forschung, BMBF) on 8 June. Named after physicist and former DFG president Heinz Maier-Leibnitz, the prize has been awarded to young researchers since 1977 in recognition of outstanding achievement. The prize is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

This year's winners were chosen from 104 nominated candidates in a multi-stage selection process. Of the 57 nominees accepted for the review process, 15 were from the humanities and social sciences, 19 from the life sciences, eleven from the areas of physics, mathematics and earth science, four from chemistry and process technology and eight from the engineering sciences. Amongst the 57 reviewed candidates were 20 women.

The prize winners are:

Dr. Friedrich Eisenbrand (32), Computer Science, Max Planck Institute for Computer Science, Saarbrcken

Friedrich Eisenbrand's research area is on the border between mathematics and computer science, and deals primarily with the task of finding optimal decisions among a multitude of alternatives. Dr. Eisenbrand's groundbreaking achievements have made fundamental contributions to the theory and algorithms of discrete and combinatorial optimisation, thus gaining worldwide recognition. His work has contributed to a deeper understanding of the degrees of difficulty of specific problems and a better estimation of the effort required for
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Contact: Dr. Jutta Rateike
jutta.rateike@dfg.de
49-228-885-2665
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
31-Mar-2004