Madame de Staël Prize awarded to Viola Priesemann
The ALLEA award recognizes Viola Priesemann, Board Member of the German Young Academy ("Die Junge Akademie"), for her groundbreaking contributions to interdisciplinary science, her exceptional leadership during the pandemic, and her dedication to fostering pan-European collaboration in science, policy, and public health.
ALLEA, the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities, has awarded Viola Priesemann with the 2024 Madame de Staël Prize for European Values in recognition of her remarkable scientific achievements in the field of physics, her exceptional leadership and her profound commitment to fostering international scientific collaboration in response to the challenges generated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
"Global challenges like the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic require an understanding from the perspective of complex systems. That perspective, together with integrating the multidisciplinary expertise from our colleagues, and the diverse experiences from their different European countries, allowed us to jointly develop a holistic view on pandemic mitigation, and develop science-based interventions," said Viola Priesemann. “Understanding and fighting the pandemic has been a prime example of transdisciplinary collaboration among international scientists, and I am proud that I could coordinate this joint effort as a complexity researcher,” she concludes.
The selection committee acknowledged Viola Priesemann's efforts and contributions to the advancement of pan-European cooperation in science, policy, and public health. Beyond her role during the pandemic, her ongoing collaborations highlight the pivotal role of interdisciplinary basic research for crisis preparedness.
"The jury wholeheartedly agreed to award Viola Priesemann with the 2024 Madame de Staël Prize in recognition of her exceptional scientific leadership and dedication to fostering European collaboration. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Prof Priesemann brought together a team of researchers, from various countries and diverse disciplines, to coordinate mitigation strategies, resulting in several papers, including a practicable 'Action Plan for Pan-European Defense against new SARS-CoV-2 variants'. Her work reflects the values embodied in the Prize - promoting science as a global public good, facilitating scientific collaboration across borders and disciplines, and strengthening the impact of science in society," said Paweł Rowiński, President of ALLEA and chair of the Madame de Staël Prize Jury.
About the laurate
Viola Priesemann is a Board Member of "Die Junge Akademie", professor of Physics at the Georg-August-University and group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and SelfOrganization in Göttingen. She is a member of the Board of the Campus Institute for Data Science, the Cluster of Excellence 'Multiscale Bioimaging', the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities. She leads research projects in several collaborative research centers (SFBs) and coordinates a large project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) on pandemics and infodemics. Her research focuses on living and artificial neural networks, carving out the basic mechanisms of self-organization, learning, and efficient coding. Intriguingly, similar core mechanisms might also govern interactions in societal networks, which allows one to investigate similar principles in infectious disease spread, opinion dynamics, and spread of (mis)information. Her research has received multiple awards, including the Communitas Prize of the Max Planck Society, the Lise Meitner Lecture by the German Physical Society (DPG) and the Austrian Physical Society (ÖPG), the Lower Saxony Science Award, and the Dannie Heineman Award.
About the award
ALLEA's annual Madame de Staël Prize recognizes eminent researchers and scholars across Europe whose work embodies significant contributions to the cultural and intellectual values of Europe and to ideas of European integration. lt was launched in 2014 and has received great support from various members of the European Commission including its then President, José Manuel Barroso.
Viola Priesemann is the eleventh outstanding scholar to win ALLEA's annual prize. Other recent laureates include Prof Fabiola Gianotti, particle physicist and Director-General of CERN, and Koen Lenaerts, President of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and Professor of European Law at the University of Leuven.
About ALLEA
ALLEA is the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities, representing more than 50 academies from across Europe. Since its foundation in 1994, ALLEA speaks out on behalf of its members on European and international stages, promotes science as a global public good, and facilitates scientific collaboration across borders and disciplines. Jointly with its Member Academies, ALLEA works towards improving the conditions for research, providing the best independent and interdisciplinary science advice, and strengthening the role of science in society. ln doing so, it channels the intellectual excellence and experience of European academies for the benefit of the research community, decision-makers, and the public. ALLEA is constituted as a non-for-profit association and remains fully independent from political, religious, commercial or ideological interests. For more information visit www.allea.org.
This press release was first published by ALLEA and is shared with kind permission