Michel Knigge was appointed Professor for School and Teaching Development in Inclusive Education (pay scale group W3) at the Faculty of Human Sciences.

Previously, he had held the post of University Professor for Rehabilitation Psychology at Humboldt University Berlin since March 2020. As University Professor for Inclusion and Organizational Development in Potsdam, he was the head of the Department of Educational Science and the Educational Studies unit, after several years as temporary Professor for Educational Psychology at MLU Halle-Wittenberg and the University of Hamburg. From 2007 to 2011, Dr. Knigge served as head of the then newly established Research Data Center at the Institute for Educational Quality Improvement. Regarding the content of his research, Michel Knigge stands for school research that is strongly influenced by social psychology, with the hope of contributing to a reduction of disadvantages in education and society.

Jan Haerter was appointed Professor for Computational Physics/Climate Physics (pay scale group W2) at the Faculty of Science.

Previously, he held professorial appointments at the Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen University, and at Constructor University/Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Research in Bremen. His Ph.D. thesis was on theoretical solid state physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

For his research, which focuses on complex systems and self-organization, he was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant as well as a Villum Young Investigator Grant.  His current research focus lies in the formation of thunderstorm clusters in Earth’s atmosphere, which can lead to extreme events from intense precipitation and flooding.

In terms of teaching, Jan Haerter will be heavily engaged in the international and interdisciplinary master’s program “Climate, Earth, Water, and Sustainability (ClEWS)”.

Bianca Reinisch was appointed Professor for Didactics of Biology (pay scale group W1, tenure track) at the Faculty of Science.

She completed teaching degree programs for biology and German and received her doctorate in the field of didactics of biology from Freie Universität Berlin in 2018. Subsequently, she worked as a postdoc in the Didactics of Biology group (Freie Universität Berlin) until 2023, with a focus on teaching from 2020. From 2020 to 2023, she was also the head of the DFG project "Analysis of biology-specific nature of science features in the biology curriculum (Bio-NOS)", for which she had acquired funding. In addition to her research work, she also served as a teacher at a Berlin high school in the school years 2021/2022 and 2022/2023.

Her research examines the conceptions of high school students and students in pre-service teacher education degree programs on the Nature of Science, with a focus on biology. She is also interested in the evaluated use and digitization of the Draw-A-Scientist Test (DAST).

Martin Salzmann has been appointed Professor for Grammar Theory (pay scale group W2) with a focus on syntax at the Faculty of Human Sciences.

After completing his doctorate in Leiden in 2006, Martin Salzmann worked in Zurich, Constance, and Leipzig within the framework of research fellowships and his own third-party funded projects. From 2015 to 2019, he conducted research as a Heisenberg Fellow in Leipzig and held two temporary professorships at the University of Potsdam. From 2019 to 2023, he held the post of Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania (with tenure from 2022). He has been Associate Editor of the Natural Language and Linguistic Theory journal since 2020.
Martin Salzmann's research focuses on theoretical linguistics, more precisely on syntax: the component of grammar in which words and word groups are combined to form larger units and which mediates between sound and meaning. His main research focuses are the architecture of grammar (especially interface issues), micro- and macro-variation and their limits, as well as experimental syntax. Martin Salzmann has worked on a variety of languages, but especially on German and German dialects, English, Greek, some Bantu languages, as well as Uralic languages.