Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Preis for Dr Claire Donnelly

Congratulations to Dr. Claire Donnelly for winning the DFG’s Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize!

This year, alongside three other female and six male scientists, Claire Donnelly will receive Germany's most prestigious award for researchers in the early stages of their careers. Each recipient will receive a prize of 200,000 euros, intended to support further research endeavours for a period of up to three years. The awards ceremony is scheduled to take place on June 4, 2024 in Berlin.

Claire Donnelly is the group leader of the Spin3D group at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids and TU Dresden

The prize citation reads:

'The unique physical properties of nanomaterials, i.e. materials with very small dimensions of one to 100 nanometers (a nanometer is one millionth of a millimeter), have been opening up new possibilities in technology and science for years. Within microscopically small solid-state structures, nanometer-scale areas can be distinguished that have completely different magnetic properties. Physicist Claire Donnelly wants to find out more about these magnetic nano-ranges. Her research has already led to the fact that the magnetic properties of tiny three-dimensional solid-state systems can now be investigated and spatially represented with an accuracy of a few tens of nanometers - and with a temporal resolution in the picosecond range, i.e. a trillionth of a second. Her current work is also dedicated to the production of nanomaterials with specific magnetic properties in a targeted manner.'

About the prize:

The Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize is awarded annually to outstanding researchers at an early stage of their scientific careers. It has been named after the nuclear physicist and former DFG President Heinz Maier-Leibnitz since 1980 and is considered the most important prize in Germany for the promotion of scientific personalities at an early stage of their careers. Up to and including 2022, the DFG and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) awarded the prizes jointly. Since 2023, the DFG has awarded the prizes independently and increased the prize money from 20,000 to 200,000 euros per prizewinner.