Awards and Honors
Prof. Dr. Wilfried Schubarth has been awarded the Fontane Medal by Brandenburg's Interior Minister.
The award was presented by Interior Minister René Wilke during the celebrations marking the 25th anniversary of the Brandenburg Crime Prevention Council. By presenting the award, the Interior Minister paid tribute to Schubarth's many years of voluntary work on the Crime Prevention Council. The educationalist had been actively involved there for over 15 years, headed up the working group "Child, Youth, and Violent Delinquency: Child and Youth Protection", organized conferences, and issued publications, thereby raising the Council's profile.
Wilfried Schubarth was Professor of Education and Socialization Theory at the University of Potsdam until 2021. His work focused on educational research, particularly violence and right-wing extremism and their prevention, as well as teacher training, and education on values and democracy.
Prof. Dr. Iwan-Michelangelo D'Aprile was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Latvia in Riga.
Through this award, the oldest and largest university in the Baltic state is paying special tribute to D'Aprile's commitment to Latvian-German cooperation, which culminated in the opening of the Interdisciplinary Center for German Studies at the University of Latvia in June 2025. From 2026 onward, German will be offered as a second foreign language in Latvia, and teachers will be trained for this at the newly established center. D'Aprile was also the driving force behind Latvia's inclusion in a joint European university network along with the universities of Tartu, Luxembourg, Bordeaux, Athens, Bologna, Copenhagen, and Krakow.
Iwan-Michelangelo D’Aprile has been Professor of Enlightenment Cultures at the University of Potsdam since 2015. His research focuses on the cultural and literary history of the 18th and 19th centuries, with particular emphasis on the Enlightenment and its historical impact.
Prof. Dr. Kevin Dadaczynski (left)was awarded second prize in the Berlin Health Prize for the "Nebolus" app. The prize, worth a total of €50,000, has been awarded to innovative projects in healthcare by the Berlin Medical Association and the Federation of the AOK since 1995.
The "Nebolus" app is designed to enable young people to learn about health services in their local area in a playful way. To this end, healthcare providers throughout Germany can create their own rallies in which users follow a story told by virtual protagonists to specific locations in their area and explore what these locations have to offer in a low-threshold manner. The aim is to convey information in a playful way while minimizing any inhibitions that may prevent people from using the services. Around 170 professionals nationwide use the app, which is now also being used by students, senior citizens, and young parents.
Kevin Dadaczynski has been Professor of Health Education at the University of Potsdam since April 2025. He is engaged in research on the intertwining of health education and digitalization. He is currently developing the "Buttrfly" app to encourage greater citizen participation in health-related topics.
Prof. Markus Rex has received the NOMIS Award for groundbreaking interdisciplinary research.
The scientist attracted particular attention when he headed up the MOSAiC expedition (Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate) from fall 2019 to fall 2020. This entailed the research vessel Polarstern drifting through the Arctic and getting frozen in the ice for a year. The goal was to better understand the complex interplay between the ocean, ice, atmosphere, and ecosystem. MOSAiC enabled hundreds of researchers from institutes in 19 countries to make significant contributions to the global understanding of climate feedback mechanisms in the central Arctic.
Markus Rex is Director of Atmospheric Research at the Alfred Wegener Institute as well as being a professor at the University of Potsdam. He did his PhD in atmospheric physics at Freie Universität Berlin and completed his habilitation thesis at the University of Bremen. His career took him to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in California, and to the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.
