Leibniz Prize for Jacobs Professor Antje Boetius

Antje Boetius, Professor of Microbiology at Jacobs University since 2001, receives the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) for outstanding young researchers. Endowed with 2.5 Mio. Euros the prize is Germany’s most important research award. The 41 year old marine microbiologist, who also heads a joint research team of the Max Planck Institute of Marine Microbiology and the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research and is a project leader at the University of Bremen, is the only woman amongst this year’s 11 Leibniz awardees. She was the first to prove the existence of sea floor dwelling microbial communities composed of sulphate reducing bacteria and methane degrading archaea, which are of major climatic relevance.

[ Dec 05, 2008]  “I am really happy about this prize, especially since it has been dedicated to my scientific contribution to Microbial Ecology,” Antje Boetius comments on the award. “Although it is so important to know much more about environmental microbes and their role in global element cycles and other biological processes, it is often not regarded as the hottest kind of research, as it deals with invisible and mostly unknown organisms of a gigantic diversity.” The scientist, who intends to use the prize money for the further development of marine technologies and methods for the observation of biological processes and changes in biodiversity at the ocean floor, amongst others, will focus her efforts on Arctic Ocean ecosystems in the future. “I would also like to take the opportunity to thank all the numerous Jacobs students who work as assistants and interns in our laboratory and help with our routine measurements, and who have contributed their share of the teamwork that has led to this success,” Boetius says.

Jacobs University President Joachim Treusch: “My heartfelt congratulations to Prof. Boetius for this great award, which acknowledges her excellent research and opens up new opportunities for her! Our young university can be very proud to have been able to count such talented scientists like Antje Boetius among its start-up faculty right from its opening in 2001.“ The Leinbiz Prize, in addition to the Alfried Krupp Prize for Young University Teachers with its 1 Mio. Euro endowment and the “Professor of the Year“ award of the German Association of University Professors and Lecturers, is the third high-ranking research and teaching award in Germany this year that goes to a woman scientist from Jacobs University. “In the 22 years during which the Leibniz Prize has been awarded there were only 29 women amongst the 293 awardees. That the working environment of Jacobs University enables women, to live up to their full potential in today’s still men-dominated science world, is another reason to be very proud of,” the university president adds.

The better part of Antje Boetius’ work takes place on the high ocean. Since 1989 the scientist participated in more than 30 expeditions of German and foreign research vessels, probing and analyzing ocean floor ecology with numerous innovative methods. Her research focuses on the most tiny sea floor inhabitants. Boetius was the first scientist to actually prove the existence of special sulphate reducing and methane metabolizing microbial communities in anoxygenic ocean floor environments, which degrade significant amounts of sea-floor-bound methane and thereby prevent the dangerous greenhouse gas from polluting the atmosphere. Boetius was also the first in describing the process of anaerobic methane oxidation, which was of major interest for ecologists, oceanographers, microbiologist, and biochemists in the understanding and the further research of this highly climate relevant process.

After studying biology in Hamburg, Antje Boretius received her PhD from the University of Bremen. She held several research positions, for instance at the Institute for Baltic Sea Research in Warnemünde and at the Bremen-based Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology (MPI), before she joined Jacobs University in 2001 as one of its first professors. In addition to her professorship the scientist kept working at the MPI as well as on projects of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, which she will join with al full position in the beginning of 2009.

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