Award for excellent research: Reinhart Heinrich Doctorate Prize 2024 for Dr. Simon Syga

Outstanding Research in Mathematical Modeling

The prestigious Reinhart Heinrich Dissertation Prize 2024 of the European Society for Mathematical and Theoretical Biology (ESMTB) has been awarded to Dr. Simon Syga, a researcher at CIDS / Center for Information Services and High Performance Computing (ZIH) at TU Dresden. This international award recognizes his dissertation on the mathematical modeling of tumor evolution, which impressively combines theoretical methods with medically relevant questions.At the heart of his work is a newly developed cellular automaton model that mathematically represents and simulates the diversity of tumor cells. Using this approach, the mathematician was able to demonstrate how genetic mutations and dynamic changes in cell behavior can influence the risk of relapse after cancer treatment.

New Insights into Tumor Evolution

“Dr. Syga develops and analyses a cellular automaton model for individual cell behavior, using non-trivial mathematics, to increase the understanding about how genetic mutation and phenotypic adaptation affect the occurrence of cancer and its possible reoccurrence after treatment,” emphasized the international jury in its statement.

For Simon Syga, the relevance to medical practice is crucial: “I am interested in how seemingly random changes in individual cells can, over long periods, lead to complex disease patterns,” he explains. “Mathematical models allow us to systematically investigate such processes with the goal of enabling more targeted therapies in the long term. The Reinhart Heinrich Prize is a wonderful recognition of my work and means a great deal to me.”

Scientific Recognition and Significance of the Award

The dissertation was completed in the “Innovative Methods of Computing” (IMC) department at ZIH, TU Dresden, which has made internationally recognized contributions to the modeling of biological systems for many years. Already in May 2024, Dr. Simon Syga received the MTZ® Award for Systems Medicine for his work (see announcement).The Reinhart Heinrich Prize commemorates systems biology pioneer Reinhart Heinrich (1946–2006) and is awarded annually for outstanding dissertations in the field of mathematical and theoretical biology. The award includes a plenary lecture at the European Conference on Mathematical and Theoretical Biology (ECMTB) 2026 in Graz, as well as the publication of the dissertation as a lead article in the ESMTB annual report.