Schering Stiftung

Prize winner 

Portrait Dr. Agnes Toth Petroczy

Portrait Dr. Agnes Toth Petroczy
Photo: Katrin Boes, MPI-CBG

Dr. Agnes Toth-Petroczy

Schering Young Investigator Award 2025

Portrait Dr. Agnes Toth Petroczy
Photo: Katrin Boes, MPI-CBG

Dr. Agnes Toth-Petroczy

Schering Young Investigator Award 2025


The Schering Stiftung awards its inaugural Schering Young Investigator Award 2025 to the biochemist and systems biologist Dr. Agnes Toth-Petroczy. The internationally recognized young scientist receives the award for her pathbreaking work on the evolution, diversity, and function of proteins – especially those that have so far been largely unexplored.

Through her interdisciplinary research, Dr. Agnes Toth-Petroczy, research group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, combines modern computer models with biochemical experiments to illuminate key questions of protein biology. She focuses on previously little-understood proteins that lack a fixed structure – so-called intrinsically disordered proteins – which account for approx. 30 percent of the human proteome. Moreover, she investigates how errors in protein production – so-called phenotypic mutations as a result of transcription and translation errors – shape protein diversity and function. Another focus is on how proteins organize themselves into so-called biomolecular condensates and the evolution of these processes. Her research opens up new perspectives on molecular mechanisms in health and disease – with relevance for diseases such as cancer, neurodegenerative and autoimmune disorders – and significantly contributes to our understanding of protein diversity at the systemic level.

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Side events 

Disordered Proteins in Evolution and Disease

November 25, 2025, 9:45–11 a.m.
Student lecture at OSZ

open to the press, registration required

Materials 

Jury 

Friedhelm von Blanckenburg explores the Geochemistry of the Earth's surface by inorganic isotope geochemical and mass spectrometric methods.

Previously he has dealt with deciphering the processes in the interior of the Earth, such as the origin of granitic rocks in collisional mountains. This led him to propose the so-called "slab breakoff" hypothesis. He then turned his isotopic tools onto ocean sediments to determine the transfer of erosion products into the oceans.

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Prof. Dr. Alexander Bartelt

Else Kröner Fresenius Professor

Chair of Translational Nutritional Medicine, Technical University of Munich

Alexander Bartelt (*1982) deals with the molecular biology of metabolism and how it gets out of joint in obesity, fatty liver, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. He has gained important insights into the molecular functioning of fat metabolism, fat cells and their interaction with the immune system. Through his work on nutrition, energy metabolism and thermogenesis, he is helping to shed light on the question of how weight gain and weight loss are regulated at the cellular level. His work places metabolic adaptation to stress factors at the center of the pathogenesis of complex cardiometabolic diseases.

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Markus List obtained his PhD in 2015 at the University of Southern Denmark and worked for two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics. In 2018, he started a research group at the School of Life Sciences at the Technical University of Munich, where he was appointed as Assistant Professor in 2023.

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Nadine Biedenkopf is research group leader at the Institute of Virology at the Philipps University Marburg. Her research in the field of infection biology and virology focuses on highly pathogenic viruses, filoviruses, Ebola and Marburg virus.

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Volker Siffrin is a neurologist and research group leader currently serving as a senior physician at the Department of Neurology at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin. He earned his PhD at the German Rheumatism Research Center Berlin and completed his medical training at the universities of Marburg, Aberdeen, and Berlin. In 2010, he obtained his board certification in neurology and achieved his habilitation in 2015. His research focuses on chronic inflammation, autoimmune diseases, and neurodegenerative processes, utilizing advanced technologies such as two-photon laser scanning microscopy and human in vitro culture models.

 

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Tatiana Korotkova studied physiology in Moscow and earned her Ph.D. in Düsseldorf. After postdocs in Heidelberg and Berlin, she became group leader at FMP and head of the Neurocircuit Research Group at the MPI for Metabolism Research. She is now director at the Center for Physiology at th Cologne Excellence Cluster on Aging and Aging-Associated Diseases.

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1993, Diploma in Chemistry, Tübingen/Germany. 1997, PhD in Physical Chemistry, Tübingen/Germany; 1997-2000, Postdoc in Protein Science at the Weizmann Institute of Science/Israel. 2001-2008, Independent Research Group Leader/Heisenberg Professor for protein biophysics, Frankfurt a. M./Germany. Since 2008, full professor for biophysics, Osnabrück/Germany. Since 2018, Managing Director of the Center for Cellular Nanoanalytics (CellNanOs).

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Unter den Linden 32-34
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Telefon: +49.30.20 62 29 65
Email: info@scheringstiftung.de

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