Newly Appointed
Christin Siegfried was appointed Professor of Economic and Business Education for vocational teaching degrees (pay scale group W3) at the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences.
After completing her cooperative training program in International Business Administration at accadis University of Applied Sciences Bad Homburg and Northumbria University in Newcastle, she completed a master's degree in Economic and Business Education at Goethe University Frankfurt. Christin Siegfried completed her doctorate on the topic of "Professional economic competence" and gained her habilitation in Frankfurt in 2022 while holding a temporary professorship for economic and business education at Georg August University Göttingen. She then became Professor of Economics and Social Sciences and Their Didactics at Weingarten University of Education. Her many years of research on (professional) economic competence were honored with the Goethe University’s "New Horizon – President's Award" in 2022.
Her research focuses on learning potentials through the use of new learning technologies, communication processes in the context of learner interactions, and teacher professionalization for economics-related teaching.
Jakob Runge was appointed Professor for AI in the Sciences (pay scale group W3) at the Faculty of Science.
After completing his studies and doctorate in theoretical physics at HU Berlin, Jakob Runge joined Imperial College London in 2016 with a Postdoctoral Fellowship Award from the James S. McDonnell Foundation. From 2017 to 2024, he initially was a research group leader at the Institute of Data Science at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and from 2021 to 2024, a visiting professor at the TU Berlin with an ERC Starting Grant. For his work, Jakob Runge was awarded the Carl Ramsauer Prize of the German Physical Society’s Berlin branch and the DLR Science Prize, among others. In 2024, he was appointed to a full professorship at TU Dresden.
In his research, Jakob Runge develops theory, methods, and software for causal inference with a strong application focus. Causal inference complements artificial intelligence methods by going beyond mere correlations and enabling AI to learn cause-and-effect relationships.
Maria Maares was appointed Professor of Food Chemistry (pay scale group W2) at the Faculty of Sciences.
She studied food chemistry at TU Berlin, where she completed her doctorate in 2019 in the field of food chemistry and toxicology on the topic of "In vitro models for the investigation of intestinal zinc absorption." Maria Maares then conducted research as a postdoc in the DFG research group TraceAge and from 2022, was principal investigator for the topic of "Zinc, mucus, and the O-glycome." She was awarded the Josef Schormüller Medal of the German Chemical Society for her research. She held the Chair of Food Chemistry at the University of Potsdam on a temporary basis in 2023 and conducted research at the Institute of Structural and Functional Glycobiology at the University of Lille in France in 2024.
Her research focuses on (instrumental) metal and glycan analysis, the role of essential trace elements such as zinc and selenium for (intestinal) mucus formation, and bioeconomic issues, particularly with regard to the production of foods that are rich in protein and trace elements.
Kevin Dadaczynski was appointed Professor of Health Education in Sports (pay scale grade W2) at the Faculty of Human Sciences.
He is a health scientist with a special focus on health promotion and prevention in schools. After completing his doctorate in health education at Leuphana University Lüneburg, he worked at the Federal Center for Health Education (BZgA, since 02/2025 Federal Institute of Public Health) before taking up the professorship for health information and health communication at Fulda University of Applied Sciences in 2018. Since October 2020, he has been co-head of the German study network of "Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC)." The largest child and adolescent health study in the world is conducted in Germany every four years.
In his research, Kevin Dadaczynski deals with complex intervention approaches for school-based health promotion as well as the conditions under which interventions are implemented and permanently established in schools. In this context, school principals play an important role for him as gatekeepers for innovation and change processes. He also deals with the question of how innovative approaches to health-related topics can be created using playful approaches.
