Lena Funcke Receives the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize
Germany’s most prestigious award for early-career researchers honors her groundbreaking work in theoretical physics

Clausius Assistant Professor and ML4Q Member Lena Funcke has been awarded the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The prize is one of the most prestigious awards for early-career researchers in Germany and comes with 200,000 euros in funding to support her future research.

Lena Funcke was selected as one of ten laureates from a competitive pool of 180 nominees across disciplines. Her research spans theoretical physics, computer science, and mathematics, with a special focus on developing computational methods to explore quantum field theories. She uses machine learning to create algorithms for quantum and classical computing and constructs new models that go beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. Among her key achievements is a novel theoretical model offering an explanation for the extremely small mass of neutrinos.

At the University of Bonn, Lena Funcke holds a Clausius Professorship in the Transdisciplinary Research Area (TRA) “Matter”. She is actively engaged in ML4Q, which brings together researchers from Bonn, Cologne, Aachen, and the Forschungszentrum Jülich to investigate the foundations of quantum computing. Additionally, she contributes to the “Color Meets Flavor” Cluster of Excellence, a collaborative initiative of the universities of Bonn, Siegen, and TU Dortmund.

University of Bonn Rector Prof. Dr. Michael Hoch congratulated her, stating:

“Her groundbreaking research at the nexus of theoretical physics, mathematics and computer science is of major importance in efforts to develop models going beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. I am extremely pleased that the research work of this outstanding scientist is now being honored through the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize.”

About Lena Funcke
After studying in Münster and Cambridge (UK), Funcke completed her doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Physics and LMU Munich at age 23. She continued her postdoctoral research at the Perimeter Institute in Canada and MIT in the U.S. before joining Bonn in 2022 as a Clausius Assistant Professor.

About the Prize
Since 1977, the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize has been awarded annually by the DFG to outstanding early-career researchers. In addition to recognizing academic excellence, the award supports recipients in shaping their independent research profile.

[based on the press release of the University of Bonn]