Julia Mahamid of EMBL Heidelberg has received the Leibniz Prize, awarded by the German Research Foundation award for her work on in-cell structural biology.
The Leibniz award is the most prestigious award in German science; the awardees have conducted seminal ground-breaking research.
Dr Mahamid was recognised for her “contributions to in situ structural biology, which have taken our understanding of molecular architecture and cellular processes to a new level”
She was the only structural biologist to be recognised in 2026, and now receives a prize of €2.5m, which can be used to advance their research in structural biology over the next seven years.
Prof. Harald Schwalbe, Instruct-ERIC Director, commented: “Dr. Mahamid is an outstanding scientist working at EMBL Heidelberg. She is very visible, pursuing an impressive research programme, both individually, but also within highly visible research collaborations. Her work is at the forefront of in situ structural biology. We in Instruct are proud that Julia is part of the cryo-EM and cryo-ET facility in EMBL Heidelberg, a Instruct centre. Our sincere congratulations from the Instruct community that units more than 10.000 European researchers in integrated structural biology.”
Following a PhD at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Mahamid worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry. She joined EMBL as Group Leader in 2017 and became a senior scientist in 2021 – find out more about EMBL Heidelberg and apply to access its high end infrastructure here.