Marie-Luise Jung Prize Award for Outstanding Heidelberg Master’s Student
Press Release No. 48/2025
15 May 2025
Marie-Luise Jung Prize, presented for the third time, goes to life scientist Henrike Antony
Henrike Antony is to be awarded the Marie-Luise Jung Prize as an outstanding master’s graduate of Heidelberg University. She has been selected to receive the award in recognition of her scientific potential regarding her doctoral phase, which has since begun, and a subsequent career in academic research. The prize, jointly initiated by the university with the Constituted Student Body and the Doctoral Convention, is granted by the Faculty of Biosciences; it commemorates the biology student killed during a shooting three years ago, whose express wish was to embark on such an academic career at Heidelberg University. Prize-winner Henrike Antony studied Molecular Biosciences with a focus on Neurosciences at Heidelberg University and is now working on her doctoral thesis in Bonn. The academic ceremony to award the prize will take place on 21 May 2025 in the Great Hall of the Old University.
The key reasons for the selection of this year’s prize-winner were – besides her constantly excellent academic results – the special quality and significance of her Master’ thesis, which Henrike Antony wrote at McLean Hospital of Harvard Medical School in Boston (USA). It deals with a genetic risk factor in the development of Alzheimer’s dementia (AD). For her investigations, Henrike Antony used a model with cells from, inter alia, AD patients; these patient cell-based systems are increasingly gaining in importance with personalized therapeutic and diagnostic approaches. In her master’s thesis she was able to show that – through this genetic risk factor – insulin receptors in one type of brain cell are metabolized differently than is otherwise the case. This represents a possible point of entry for new AD therapy strategies. “Henrike Antony stood out during her master’s program by her outstanding contributions to different neuroscientific research projects, through which she has already co-authored three publications in international journals,” underlines Prof. Dr Christoph Schuster, Dean of Studies of the Faculty of Biosciences. Moreover, the prize-winner has received several scholarships for her academic achievements. Her doctoral thesis is based at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and the University of Bonn.
Henrike Antony studied Molecular Biomedicine at the University of Bonn and transferred to Heidelberg University after her bachelor’s degree to take a master’s course in Molecular Biosciences specializing in Neurosciences. During her student years she worked in various research laboratories in Germany and abroad. At Southampton General Hospital, which belongs to the University Hospital Southampton (UK) she explored neuroimmunological issues relating to Alzheimer’s disease, which were also her main focus while at McLean Hospital. For her doctoral thesis, begun in 2024, she is doing research at the DZNE in Bonn on communication between synapses and microglia – a certain group of immune cells in the central nervous system.
Prof. Dr Frauke Melchior, Rector of Heidelberg University, will open the academic ceremony to award the Marie-Luise Jung Prize. Greetings will follow from Jana Seifert and Sebastian Fath, chairs of the Constituted Student Body, as well as Paolo González Jabalera on behalf of the Doctoral Convention. The Dean of Studies at the Faculty of Biosciences will give the tribute to Henrike Antony who, after Prof. Melchior has presented her with the prize, will report on her scientific work. The award ceremony will be framed musically by members of the Collegium Musicum, conducted by University Music Director Michael Sekulla.
In 2022, the Rectorate and the governing bodies of the Constituted Student Body and the Doctoral Convention decided, in consultation with the Faculty of Biosciences and the victim’s family, that a prize would be initiated in memory of the 23-year-old student who lost her life, and financed over a period of 20 years. The Marie-Luise Jung Prize comes with 1,500 euros in prize money and is awarded annually during an academic ceremony.
Note for Newsrooms
The academic ceremony to award the Marie-Luise Jung Prize is taking place on 21 May 2025 in the Great Hall of the Old University, starting at 6.30pm. Media representatives are asked to register by 20 May with presse@rektorat.uni-heidelberg.de. Taking photos and filming is only possible by arrangement with the Press Office.