Humboldt Foundation awards four €5m professorships

Four researchers have received professorships at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, one of Germany’s most prestigious research funders.

The four international scientists will be given €5 million each to spend five years at a German research institution and build up a research group there. The goal of the funding is to create world-leading research departments at German universities and research organisations.

This year’s winners are: Giuseppe Caire, an information technologist at the University of Southern California in the United States; Emmanuelle Charpentier, a microbiologist at Umeå University in Sweden; Jens Förster, a psychologist at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands; and Hidenori Takagi, a particle researcher at the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute in Saitama, Japan.