2019 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize goes to Knut Drescher
Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology receives Germany's most significant award for young scientists, the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize, which is jointly awarded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF).

Knut Drescher joined the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in 2014 and has been leading a research group focused on bacterial biofilms. His work combines approaches from physics, data science, and molecular microbiology, to understand how bacterial multicellular behaviors develop, and what the evolutionary consequences of bacterial multicellular behaviors are. Knut’s research is highly interdisciplinary, and has led to significant new advances in biofilm research, which are now recognized by the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize.
Before Knut Drescher joined the Max Planck Institute in Marburg, he performed postdoctoral research at Princeton University in the USA, and a PhD on biophysics at the University of Cambridge (UK).
More information about Knut Drescher’s research can be found on his lab website: