Award ceremony on May 26, 2025
Both the Established Scientist Award and the Early-Career Award are sponsored by the Manfred Lautenschläger-Stiftung gGmbH and presented by the DKFZ. This year's award ceremony took place during the 4th German Cancer Research Congress on May 26, 2025, at the DKFZ in Heidelberg.
This year’s Established Scientist Award was presented to epidemiologist and public health expert Prof. Dr. Ute Mons. Together with colleagues from the DKFZ, she was the first to determine how many cancer cases in Germany can be attributed to individual risk factors that people can influence themselves. Building on this, she conducted simulation studies to examine how many cancer cases could be prevented through public health policies. Thanks to Ute Mons' research, these figures can now provide policymakers and healthcare professionals with valuable guidance on how to use the potential of cancer prevention more effectively. Currently, Ute Mons and her team at the DKFZ are studying how political measures and prevention programs influence people’s behavior and impact public health. Her group develops and tests concepts aimed at improving public access to preventive measures. In addition, her research seeks to identify individual risk profiles and create personalized prevention strategies tailored to these risks.
The Early-Career Award went to physician and scientist Jun.-Prof. Dr. Carolin Schneider from the University Hospital Aachen. Using biostatistics, language-capable algorithms, and artificial intelligence, the aspiring specialist in internal medicine and her research team scour large medical databases - such as the UK Biobank - for evidence-based criteria to aid in the prevention and early diagnosis of metabolic diseases and liver cancer. Her goal is to identify risk factors and biomarkers that can be used to develop effective prevention strategies at the population level.
Prize
The German Prize for Cancer Prevention Research is divided into two parts.
Firstly, a prize of €25,000 is awarded to established, outstanding scientists who have made a long-standing and groundbreaking contribution to cancer prevention research.
Secondly, an Early-Career Award of €5,000 honors young, talented researchers (within ten years of active research after completing a PhD) for their current scientific work in cancer prevention research.
The prize money will be provided to the award winners, earmarked to enable them to continue their scientific activities.
Selection criteria
The selection criteria are the outstanding scientific originality and quality of the research work and the potential of the nominees in the fields of primary, secondary, and tertiary cancer prevention. Proposals nominating female researchers as candidates are particularly welcome.
Nominations
The prizes will be awarded based on nominations by third parties. Self-nominations are excluded. Researchers affiliated with universities and non-university (research) institutes in Germany are eligible for nomination.
The following organizations may nominate candidates:
the German Cancer Society,
German Cancer Aid,
the Fraunhofer Society,
the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers,
the Max Planck Society,
the German Medical Faculty Association,
the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and
the Leibniz Association.
Those organizations entitled to nominate can submit up to three nominations each for the Established Scientist Award and the Early-Career Award. It is also possible to repeat previous proposals.
Selection procedure
The selection of the awardees is made by an international scientific committee. The committee’s decision is final and not subject to legal appeal. This year's selection process is now complete.
Previous laureates
- Established Scientist Award: Prof. Dr. Rita Schmutzler, University of Cologne
- Early-Career Award: Dr. Jens Puschhof, DKFZ
- Established Scientist Award: Prof. Dr. Hermann Brenner, DKFZ
- Early-Career Award: Jun.-Prof. Jakob Kather, (then) RWTH Aachen