Maria Sokolova receives prestigious DFG research award for young scientists
Maria Sokolova, head of the Lise Meitner Research Group Bacteriophages at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, receives this year's Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize 2025
The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) honors Research Group Leader Maria Sokolova from the Max Planck Institute (MPI) of Biochemistry with the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize 2025. As one of ten outstanding young scientists, she receives prize money amounting to 200,000 euros. This is intended to further expand her research activities. Maria Sokolova says: “I am extremely pleased to receive the prize. It is not only a recognition of my work to date, but above all, a motivation to continue discovering the world of bacteriophages with passion and curiosity”. The award ceremony will take place in Berlin on June 3, 2025.
Bacteriophages are viruses that only infect bacteria. They are the most abundant and diverse biological entities on our planet. Many aspects have yet to be explored. Lise Meitner Research Group Leader Maria Sokolova and her team are investigating how bacteriophages function. Maria Sokolova explains: “We look at phage RNA polymerases. While RNA polymerases in many species, such as bacteria and higher organisms, are similar, the molecule in some phages appears completely different, yet it performs similar tasks to the usual polymerases. We describe those differences and unique properties.” In areas such as medicine and biotechnology, bacteriophages offer great potential for applications.
About the Awardee
Maria Sokolova studied biophysics at the Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University in St. Petersburg, Russia. In 2018, she completed her doctorate in molecular biology in the laboratory of Konstantin Severinov at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) in Moscow, Russia. In 2017, she spent a research year in the laboratory of Petr Leiman at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston, USA. After her PhD, Maria Sokolova accepted a position as Assistant Professor at the Center of Life Sciences at Skoltech. In 2019, she returned to the UTMB for a research project. From 2022 on, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher under the current President of the Max Planck Society, Patrick Cramer, at the MPI for Multidisciplinary Sciences in Göttingen. Since March 2024, she has been heading the Lise Meitner Research Group “Bacteriophages” at the MPI of Biochemistry.
About the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize
The Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize has been awarded annually since 1977 to outstanding researchers at an early stage in their scientific careers. It is intended to support and encourage prizewinners who do not yet hold a tenured professorship in pursuing their scientific career. The award recognizes not only their dissertation, but also the fact that they have already developed an independent scientific profile and are enriching the research community with their research results, so that they can be expected to continue producing top-level science in the future. The prize was initiated in 1980 and was named after atomic physicist and former DFG President Heinz Maier-Leibnitz.
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