As the award ceremony could not take place in person we thought about bringing the awardees to you instead. On February 16th at 5 pm (CET) the Bernstein Center will host a Special Bernstein Seminar which features the presentations of both awardees. Visit the event on our website or the official event website of the Berstein Center Freiburg to learn how to participate.
In this video the both awardees introduce themselves.
The two award-winning doctoral theses deal with the following topics:
1. Júlia Gallinaro: Neurons wire together if they fire together. This applies both during development and in the adult brain. However, it is not known how these growth processes are regulated to achieve a robust self-organization of brain networks. Júlia Gallinaro has employed computer simulations and mathematical theory to study homeostatic control, which makes use of the principle of negative feedback, similar to a thermostat. Her surprising findings have since led to new experiments to further clarify the basic principles of brain wiring.
Júlia Gallinaro is now pursuing her scientific interests as a postdoc at Imperial College in London.
The awarded research was performed in the lab of Prof. Stefan Rotter
(https://www.bcf.uni-freiburg.de/about/people/Rotter)
2. Katharina Heining describes in her dissertation new findings on epileptic activity in temporal lobe epilepsy in an animal model. She developed new methods to detect and classify patterns of epileptic activity and reconciles previously ambiguous findings. Based on these data, she found a systematic, context-dependent interaction between seizure frequency and the incidence of weak epileptic events. Using her classification of epileptic activity, she was also able to show a decreasing frequency of severe epileptic events with increasing degeneration of certain areas of the hippocampus.
Katharina Heining is now pursuing her scientific interests as a postdoc at Karolinska Institutet Stockholm.
The awarded research was performed in the lab of Prof. Ulrich Egert (https://www.imtek.de/professuren/biomikrotechnik/biomikrotechnik_startseite)