Thomas Fredenhagen Award 2023

The Thomas Fredenhagen Award 2023, endowed with 10,000 Euros, is awarded to Prof. Rolf Hilgenfeld for his outstanding scientific achievements and activities in the field of transfer and business cooperation. The laudatory speech was held by Prof. Dr. Thomas Peters from the Institute of Chemistry and Metabolomics.

Prof. Hilgenfeld has made groundbreaking discoveries in the field of structural elucidation of viruses over several decades. Notable examples include the Zika virus and research on the SARS-1 virus. In 2020, at the onset of the Corona pandemic, he elucidated the crystal structure of the major protease of the coronavi-rus SARS-CoV-2.
Knowledge of these structures forms the basis for further development of these compounds into antiviral drugs. This is of fundamental importance for the sustainable establishment of the business collaborations with the companies Tocris Bioscience and Atea Pharmaceuticals. His outstanding and exemplary successes in knowledge and technology transfer have led to international appeal far beyond the Hanse Innovation Campus Lübeck and are now honored with the award of the Thomas Fredenhagen Award of Luebeck`s Merchants`Association.

In addition, Dr. Ramtin Rahmanzadeh from the Institute of Biomedical Optics receives the Thomas Fredenhagen Young Scientist Award for an innovation that takes the issue of sustainability into account in a special way. The project with which he had applied is called "Freshness Sensor for Intelligent Food Packaging," which indicates on a specially prepared film whether packaged food is still edible. In his laudatory speech, Prof. Christian Sina emphasized the forward-looking importance of avoiding food waste and at the same time increasing food safety in the case of animal foods as a central issue of sustainable resource conservation. This project tackles both of these challenging tasks. The prize is endowed with 5,000 euros and was awarded for the successful establishment of the business cooperation with Porphyroin-Laboratories GmbH, which, in addition to the successes already achieved, continues to show great scientific and economic potential for the future.