Dr Matthias Bruhn awarded doctoral prize by the HZI Förderverein

One of the doctoral prizes of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research's Förderverein goes to TWINCORE scientist Dr Matthias Bruhn. He receives the award for his doctoral thesis "Analysis of vaccine-induced immunity: Impact of post-translational modification and somatic hypermutation on antibody responses", in which he showed that the combination of infection and subsequent vaccination in the case of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 even protects against future variants of the virus by the memory cells virtually predicting the future. He has described how this works in articles in the Journal of Infection and the European Journal of Immunology. Bruhn is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Experimental Infection Research at TWINCORE under the direction of Prof Ulrich Kalinke.

The prize was awarded to Matthias Bruhn at TU Braunschweig as part of the Inhoffen Lecture on 13 June 2024. "I feel very honoured to have received the doctoral prize," says Bruhn. "I was particularly impressed by the award ceremony in this festive setting." 

Ulrich Kalinke is delighted that this is the second doctoral award for his institute this year. "Bibiana Costa has already received the Doctoral Prize of the Friends of the MHH, and the fact that Matthias Bruhn is now also being honoured is really great. This is particularly inspiring for all PhD students, because both theses were written under the difficult conditions of the corona pandemic," says Kalinke.