Female Pakistani scientist wins most prestigious German award

A female Pakistani scientist is set to receive the prestigious Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2021.

Pakistani scientist named Asifa Akhtar is among the ten recipients to win the nomination for outstanding research work in her field. The award ceremony will be a virtual event, scheduled for 15th March 2021.

Very excited that two @maxplanckpress scientists are among the 2021 #LeibnizPreis recipients: our Vice President Asifa Akthar, MPI of Immunobiology & Epigenetics @AsifaAkhtar1 @mpi_ie & Volker Springel, MPI for Astrophysics. Congratulations!🥳😀https://t.co/DMlzwXASxf @dfg_public pic.twitter.com/6IPKy6gtqd

— Max Planck Society (@maxplanckpress) December 10, 2020

Serving as VP for The Max Planck Society, Asifa Akhtar hails from Karachi, she achieved her doctorate at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund London, U.K, in 1997. Later, she moved to Germany, where she worked as a Postdoctoral fellow at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg and the Adolf-Butenandt Institute in Munich from 1998 to 2001.

Asifa had also received the Early Career European Life Science Organisation Award in 2008, the EMBO membership in 2013, and the Feldberg Prize in 2017. She was elected as a member of the renowned National Academy of Science Leopoldina in 2019.

The German Research Foundation (DFG) committee has historically awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize 2021 to four female and six male scientists. Of the ten winners, two each hail from the humanities and social sciences, natural sciences and engineering, and four from life sciences.