Magdalena Pyrz was awarded best lecturer of the year and Kenneth Green was awarded best student teacher.
Reasons:
Magdalena:
Not only does Magdalena give excellent lectures, but she also displays a great passion for the the welfare of the students at the institute, both in and out of the classrooms and laboratories. No one does more for both the physical and social environment for the students at the department, and therefore Magdalena is the teacher of the year.
Kenneth:
Kenneth has been the best instructor because of his incredible energy and enthusiasm. He manages to keep us engaged and motivated through his lively teaching style. His enthusiasm rubs off and makes every lesson exciting and inspiring. Kenneth's energy has really made a difference in the learning experience and the students feel lucky to have had him as an instructor.
Imagine immunology classes turn into this cool world of superheroes each with their speciel weapon against different enemies, sounds intriguing right? Nevertheless, that's pretty much how going to classes with Kenneth has been. He is such a great teacher who finds a nice balance between himself explaining some of the toughest parts of the curriculum in a really nice and storytelling way and still invites the class to an open discussion on different work done in the field right now. There is always space for questions and speculations but never enough time to finish the good storytelling.
The MBG PhD program committee has in 2019 established an MBG PhD prize which is named in honor of Kjeld Marcker, one of the founding professors of our Department.
The price is given to exceptional PhD students who have defended their PhD study in the last year. There is no fixed number of prices per year, but only truly outstanding candidates will be considered.
The VIP members of the PhD program committee assess the nominated candidates on their overall performance. All activities during the PhD study are considered, but scientific success will be weighted strongly. Obvious aspects are publications, independence and initiative in the scientific work, popular science activities, but also any other activities within the Department or University.
Self-nomination is not possible, but anyone, including PhD students, is welcome to suggest candidates to the MBG program committee.
This year two people received the Kjeld Marcker PhD prize:
Josefine Lorentzen is described as always positive and constructive. Friendly, welcoming, considerate, and thoughtful, she is well known for being a great team player and for helping colleagues, even those outside her research group.
Josefine engages actively in scientific discussions with great knowledge and energy and has been the daily supervisor of BSc, MSc, and other PhD students. Her supervision is characterized by great engagement and motivation, with a strong focus not only on the scientific experiments but also on helping students think critically, seek new knowledge, and never stop asking questions.
During her PhD, Josefine developed a unique ligand tethering system based on inserting the ligand into the loop of an antibody to allow for structural studies of the ectodomain of an integrin receptor. She then optimized this sample for electron cryo-microscopy, which involved a long-term exchange to the EMBL facility in Hamburg. After 1.5 years of painstaking and tedious sample optimization, Josefine finally succeeded in obtaining a high-resolution data set that allowed for the description of the structure of the unique receptor-ligand complex at atomic resolution. The impressive results are still to be published but have already resulted in no less than two post-doctoral fellowships to continue the work. Josefine has actively disseminated her PhD work at international conferences and won an award for best presentation.
Henriette Rübsam is described as not only among the top PhD students to come out of the department but also as a warm and helpful personality. She is always willing to help fellow students and colleagues.
Henriette's PhD work involved several novel methodological developments, including using llama-derived antibodies to show that important receptors on the surface of plant cells form a complex that can activate root nodule organogenesis. She also identified additional receptors from important crops that can activate the same process, raising hopes that nitrogen fixation can one day be engineered into cereal crops. Henriette's PhD work was published in Science in 2023, with her as the first author. In connection with this publication, she has given numerous invited talks, including at the MBG Annual Meeting.
Henriette has also been active in interacting with the media and participated in the AU 3-minute thesis to pitch the project to disseminate the outcome to a wider audience. Finally, she has been an active member of the MBG PhD association, helping to organize the annual PhD conference and serving as an elected member of the GSNS PhD and well-being committees.
