Award ceremony: Jung Foundation for Science and Research supports promising scientific young talents in 202

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Hamburg, 2nd May 2024. The Hamburg-based Jung Foundation for Science and Research will for the first time be awarding two Jung Career Advancement Awards for Medical Research in 2024. This highlights its current focus on supporting promising scientific young talents – a focus that it already set back in 2023 by awarding five scholarships to doctoral students and by launching a new call for applications for a fellowship in medical history. This year’s Jung Career Advancement Award is going to cardiologist Dr Christine Maria Poch as well as neurologist Dr Maximilian U. Friedrich. Both will receive the full funding of €210,000. A key component of the foundation’s work is honouring outstanding research that has successfully advanced human medicine. For this reason, the Jung Foundation has decided to also award the Jung Gold Medal for Medicine this year as recognition of a life’s work. The recipient is Professor Rudolf Zechner, with the prize giving him the opportunity to award a scholarship of €30,000 to a junior scientist of his choice. The laureates will be honoured at a festive award ceremony dinner with the invited Jung family at the Anglo-German Club in Hamburg on 2nd May 2024.

The Jung Foundation for Science and Research is honouring two promising young researchers with this year’s Jung Career Advancement Award for Medical Research. Cardiologist Dr Christine Maria Poch can look forward to receiving this award and significant financial endowment for her project ‘Research into Cardiac Regeneration through Human Ventricular Progenitor Cells’. The cardiologist simulates heart diseases in an innovative three-dimensional model with the help of 3D printing technology, thus creating not only valuable platforms for researching cardiovascular diseases, but also the basis for new forms of therapy. Neurologist Dr Maximilian U. Friedrich was also able to convince with his research project ‘Brain in Balance: Translational Neuroanatomy and Connectome-Based Network Analysis of the Vestibular System’ and was awarded the Jung Foundation’s award for promising scientific young talents. His research aims to provide a better understanding of the brain networks of the vestibular system and thus to create a basis for the development of innovative therapeutic approaches for neurological diseases such as stroke, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease. The two researchers are each receiving funding of €210,000, which they can use freely to finance their respective research project.

In addition to the two prizes for promising scientific young talents, the Jung Foundation is also awarding the Jung Gold Medal for Medicine this year for a lifetime achievement in medical research. Professor Rudolf Zechner is receiving the award for his significant contributions to the study of lipid metabolism, with which he not only fundamentally changed biochemistry and physiology textbooks, but also demonstrated promising strategies for the treatment of metabolic disorders. In particular, his discovery and exploration of the adipose triglyceride lipase (ATGL) enzyme and its essential co-activator CGI-58 provided insight into the development and possible treatment of long-standing lipid storage diseases. For these efforts, the Jung Foundation is now honouring him with the Jung Medal and enabling him to award a scholarship of €30,000 to a junior scientist of his choice.

Invitation to the 4th Jung Symposium

Anyone interested in the detailed results of the research by the Jung Foundation laureates should keep their calendar for 3rd May 2024 free. From 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., the winners will be presenting their work in exciting presentations at the fourth Jung Symposium, ‘Excellence in Human Medicine 2024’. Those interested can stream the event online, or, if they live in or around Hamburg, watch it live in the Ian K. Karan auditorium, teaching campus, building N55 at the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf. All information as well as the current programme and a registration form are available at https://jung-stiftung.de/en/symposium-2024/. The event is free of charge; registration is requested.