The Joint Committee of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) announced the winners today of the 2010 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize.

One of the ten awards went to Professor Petra Schwille of the Biotechnology Center (BIOTEC) of the TU Dresden.

The prize brings with it 2.5 million Euros and the prestige of winning Germany's highest science award. The winner may use the money over seven years to pursue her own scientific agenda, no strings attached.

The TU Dresden rector's first reaction was of delight: "I gave Petra Schwille my sincere congratulations; I was so thrilled to hear about her achievement. This is proof for us that, at our university, brilliant scientists both teach and research, providing an example to inspire other leading scientists."

Professor Michael Brand, Director of Biotec, said he saw in this commendation a affirmation of effective recruiting policies in the biotechnology field. "Petra's award demonstrates that we at the TU Dresden have positive accomplishments, can attract the best minds to Dresden, and Petra Schwille showed that a gain in the field of biophysics can be won."

Petra Schwille's work has considerably advanced both the development of fluorescence spectroscopy and its application to questions in cellular biology. Ever since she received her doctoral degree, Schwille has been working on the development of fluorescence spectroscopic methods, with which the function of individual protein molecules can be characterized. Most significantly, she contributed to the development and optimization of fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS), one of the most elegant, non-invasive methods of recording molecular processes in biological systems. Through a combination of FCS and two-photon excitation, Petra Schwille achieved spectacular insights into cellular mechanisms. In her more recent work, she has tried to establish the FCS method in developmental biology and has already managed to use it in living model organisms such as the zebrafish and the roundworm. Petra Schwille also uses the FCS method to research the interactions between proteins and lipids, for which she has gained international recognition.

Schwille was born on January 25th, 1968 in the town of Sindelfingen. After her Abitur, she studied physics and philosophy at the University of Göttingen. After studying physics and philosophy, she worked with the Nobel Prize recipient Manfred Eigen in Göttingen and received her doctoral degree in Braunschweig. As a postdoctoral researcher she went to Göttingen and to Cornell University. She then returned to Göttingen to the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, where she set up her own independent junior research group. In 2002 she was appointed to chair Biophysics at the Dresden University of Technology.

This is not the first time Schwille's work has been recognized. She won, in 2003, the "Young Investigator Award for Biotechnology", from the Peter and Traudl Engelhorn Foundation and the 2004 Phillip Morris research prize. In 2005, she was appointed as a Fellow at the Max-Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics. She became a mother for the third time on November 9th, 2009.

Kim-Astrid Magister,
Press officer, TU Dresden,
Phone: 0351 463-32398,