DPZ-Award presented to awardees

Stefan Treue, director of the DPZ, was satisfied, he said. Satisfied with the decision of the DPZ's Scientific Advisory Board to split the 2014 award between two young researchers, which in his words "reflects the diversity of primate research". Two very different fields (behavioral biology and neurobiology), a woman and a man, an external award winner and an internal award winner - "it is a pleasant situation", he said at the awards ceremony on January 7th in the packed auditorium of the German Primate Center.

The Chairman of the Advisory Board, Prof. Thomas F. Schulz who awarded the prizes later, added: "It is the strength of the DPZ that is expressed in this selection - excellent research is done here in a very wide research field." The prize that Lydia Luncz from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the DPZ's Stefan Schaffelhofer received, was a "career-boost" for the winners.

This was also confirmed by the laudators. Tobias Deschner, head of the endocrinology laboratory of the Max Planck Institute, said that Lydia Luncz is an excellent junior researcher and has dealt particularly well with the extensive work done in her assessment of three chimpanzee groups at the same time. Hans Scherberger, head of the Neurobiology Laboratory at the DPZ, said about Stefan Schaffelhofer that he mastered not only many exceptional hurdles in his project, but as an engineer he developed and produced many of the devices required for his methods himself.

In conclusion, the winners presented their research projects to the close to 70 guests. Lydia Luncz has done researched on three neighboring chimpanzee groups in the Ivory Coast and found that they each have a distinct culture, inasmuch as that the acquired knowledge of how to use tools to crack a nut differs in the three groups. In his research, Stefan Schaffelhofer identified the nerve cells and the associated brain regions responsible for the planning and implementation of arm and hand movements and how the data recorded from these cells can be used to control a mechanical prosthesis.

The German Primate Center (DPZ) award is presented each year to outstanding young scientists whose do research on or with non-human primates. It includes a six-month scholarship and a cash prize of 1000 euros. Since the price is shared this year, each winner will receive a three-month scholarship to carry out a primate-related research project at an institute of their choice.