Award for Teltow
With the Brandenburg Science Awards for Teaching and Research, the government in Potsdam honors outstanding achievements in research. This year, our colleague from Teltow, Dr Xun Xu, a scientist from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon, also received the award. The postdoctoral prize is endowed with 20,000 euros.
Proud winner: Xun Xu, here with Minister Manja Schüle, received his prize for a new stem cell method. Photo: Kathleen Friedrich
The Potsdam Science Day, organized by the proWissen association, attracted around 6,200 interested visitors this year. The motto was “Research. Discover. Join in”. The basics and results of cutting-edge research from the region were on display. Around 35 universities and institutes were involved.
The Brandenburg Science Awards were also presented as part of the event. The Brandenburg Minister of Science, Manja Schüle (SPD), was present and gave a welcoming speech. In addition to the state teaching prizes, two postdoctoral prizes were awarded to researchers in an “early career phase who have published outstanding research results”.
One of these went to Xun Xu from Hereon, who won in the natural and engineering sciences category. His topic is a new stem cell method. The title of the paper: “Design criteria for geometrical cues reverting pluripotent stem cell state to naivety”.
An innovative method
The concept of Xu's work goes to revert and stabilize pluripotent stem cells to their “naïve” state through a purely biophysical approach. Naïve stem cells offer broader developmental potential for differentiation into almost all mature cell types such as neurons and heart cells. They also promote the formation of mini-organs, known as organoids, in the laboratory, which serve as a promising tool for various medical applications. Xu's work could help to strengthen this process and make it more usable.
The postdoctoral prize was awarded on May 4, 2024 at the “Albert Einstein” Science Park on the Telegrafenberg in Potsdam. Congratulations on this success!
Further Information
Institute of Functional Materials for Sustainability Website Ministry of Science BrandenburgContact
Press Officer
Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon I Kommunikation und Medien
Phone: +49 (0)4152 87-1648