Hannah Jeckel and Nadya Abbood receive Otto Hahn Medals
Dr Hannah Jeckel, and Dr Nadya Abbood, former PhD students at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, have been awarded the Otto Hahn Medal by the Max Planck Society. The medal honours outstanding achievements by young scientists and comes with a prize of 7,500 euros.
Hannah Jeckel did her PhD at the International Max Planck Research School "Principles of Microbial Life" IMPRS-Mic in the research group of Prof. Dr. Knut Drescher at the MPI Marburg. In her work, she developed an innovative method to study microbial communities with high temporal and spatial resolution, providing particularly detailed insights into the interactions between microbes.
Hannah Jeckel's work also includes the application of imaging techniques for the high-resolution observation of biofilms. She has developed software, BiofilmQ, which is now used by many researchers worldwide to analyse spatially structured microscopy images.
"Hannah has made truly outstanding contributions to the study of bacterial communities by providing researchers with the tools to characterise the composition and properties of these communities with high spatial and temporal resolution," says Prof. Dr. Knut Drescher, who now researches and teaches at the University of Basel.
Nadya Abbood studied a system of bacterial enzymes called "non-ribosomal peptide synthetases" (NRPS) in the research group of Prof. Dr. Helge Bode. In her thesis, she developed a method to modify the bacterial enzymes using synthetic biology. Using synthetic biology, she succeeded in introducing synthetic binding sites, called "SYNZIPs", which combine parts of the large enzyme complexes to form new enzymes. This creates new natural products with new properties that could be useful in the pharmaceutical industry in the future.
"It is a great honour for me to receive the Otto Hahn Medal. This award not only recognises my scientific work to date, but also supports me in my further scientific career. I would like to express my sincere thanks to the Max Planck Society, my supervisor Helge B. Bode and, of course, to everyone who has accompanied me along the way. I look forward to continuing my research at Yale University. I plan to work on small molecules from the human microbiome.
The Otto Hahn Medal is awarded annually to up to 30 young scientists. With this award, the Max Planck Society honours young, exceptionally talented scientists. The medal has been awarded annually since 1978 and is named after the famous German chemist and Nobel Prize winner Otto Hahn (1879-1968), who was also President of the Max Planck Society between 1948 and 1960.