Ten Researchers to Receive Most Important Early Career Prize / Award Ceremony on 5 May in Berlin.

This year's recipients of the most important prize for early career researchers in Germany have been announced. The selection committee, appointed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), has chosen ten researchers, five women and five men, to receive the 2015 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prizes. The prizes of 20,000 euros each will be presented on 5 May in Berlin.

The 2015 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize recipients are:

• Marian Burchardt, Empirical Social Research, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen
• Jessica Burgner-Kahrs, Mechatronics, University of Hanover
• Pavel Levkin, Polymer Chemistry, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
• Soeren Lienkamp, Medicine, University of Freiburg Medical Center
• Thomas Niendorf, Materials Engineering, TU Bergakademie Freiberg
• Stephan Packard, Media Culture Studies, University of Freiburg
• Susanne Paulus, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, University of Münster
• Cynthia Sharma, Infection Biology, University of Würzburg
• Sarah Weigelt, Psychology, University of Bochum
• Xiaoxiang Zhu, Geodesics, Technical University of Munich

The Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize has been awarded annually to outstanding early career researchers since 1977 as both recognition and an incentive to continue pursuing a path of academic and scientific excellence. Named after the atomic physicist and former DFG President, and awarded for the first time during his term of office, the prize is regarded as the most important of its kind for early career researchers in Germany. In addition, in a survey carried out by the German magazine "bild der wissenschaft”, the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize was voted the third most important science prize in Germany by the leading research institutions – after the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, presented by the DFG, and the Deutscher Zukunftspreis, awarded by the German Federal President.

A total of 127 researchers representing all research areas were nominated for this year's prize; 24 of the nominees were then shortlisted. "The academic quality of the candidates and their research work was extraordinarily high, making it a difficult pleasure for the committee to select the prizewinners from the shortlist," said the chair of the committee, DFG Vice President Professor Dr. Marlis Hochbruck, after the decisions were made.

Read the full press release on the DFG website.

15 February 2015 - Taylor & Francis

On May 15-17, 2014 the Women in Statistics Conference was held to acknowledge the strides women are making in the field and discuss ways to combat the challenges of gender inequality that remain for female statisticians. Stephanie C. Hicks discusses this conference in her article “When Women in Statistics Come to Know their Power,” and highlights the conference initiative to “provide mentoring and insight from an entire community of female statisticians in industry, academia, and government.”

The opening speech identified some of the challenges women face in the statistics industry, specifically in academia. She noted that women still receive 5-15% less in salary than men, and are additionally less likely to become tenured professors. While individual women face these challenges every day, the empowering message of the conference was to utilize the strength of the community of women statisticians in order to overcome gender inequality in the workplace. Speakers and panels discussed the impact of mentoring, the value of expanding mentorship and collaborative networks, and differences in leadership styles.

The article provides details on the ways in which the conference sought to help early-career statisticians, specifically through combatting “imposter syndrome” and the importance of social media, which Heck notes is “one of the most undervalued tools” in the statistics community. This article argues that while women consistently struggle with inequality, the community of women statisticians is helping to work towards solutions, encourage young women to get involved, and spread awareness of the problem.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09332480.2014.988947