Award ceremony
FABU once again honours outstanding graduates
On 13 January 2026, FABU will honour this year's young talent and doctoral award winners. // Photo Colourbox
The FABU doctoral prizes were financed by the Thomas Meyer Foundation. The first prize - worth 10,000 euros - goes to Vera Dinslage. Johanna Kraus is delighted with the second prize of 5,000 euros. Third prize and prize money of 2,500 euros go to Maximilian Buchmüller.
- Historian Vera Dinslage impressed the jury with her dissertation in history. She focussed on "Rule and group. The early aristocratic von Berg family in its environment".
- Physicist Johanna Kraus dedicated her doctoral thesis to "Measurement of the double-differential W →μν cross-section at high transverse masses at √s= 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector".
- Electrical engineer Maximilian Buchmüller completed his doctorate on "Nonlinear Optical Waveguide and Material Concepts for Enhanced Sensing and Light Manipulation".
FABU also awards four young talent prizes to outstanding graduates - donated by Stadtsparkasse Wuppertal. Till Jakob Wieland will be honoured with the first prize of 3,000 euros. The second prize - worth 2,000 euros - goes to Anne-Marie Thomas. The two third prizes - each worth 1,500 euros - go to Florian Volkhausen and Emma Etscheid.
- Till Jakob Wieland 's master's thesis in industrial engineering and energy management focussed on the "Development of software for island grid construction at distribution grid level after a blackout".
- Economist Anne-Marie Thomas received the prize for her Master's thesis "From Experience to Impact: Determinants for Sustainable Value Creation by Women Entrepreneurs in Kenya".
- Another FABU Young Talent Award goes to Florian Volkhausen, whose Master's thesis in political science focussed on the topic "Mapping Ecological Inequality. The Geographies of Climate Compensation Projects through the Lens of World-Systems Theory and Ecologically Unequal Exchange".
- Emma Etscheid was honoured for her Bachelor's thesis in Marketing. She wrote about "Brand versus generic: The influence of disease severity on attitudes and behaviour when choosing medication".
As part of the official award ceremony, Prof Katja Pfeiffer, Dean of the School of Art and Design, will also present the Stella Baum Art Prize. It enables art students to present their work to a wider audience and is awarded by the university's rectorate with the support of the Friends and Alumni of Bergische Universität e.V. (FABU).
This year's DAAD prize goes to Camilie Piaumier(link to press release). The student impressed the jury with both her excellent academic achievements and her active participation in a wide range of university and social initiatives.
Podcast with the award winners
Already heard? The award winners provide exciting insights into their research topics in the BUW podcast "Ausgezeichnet". As guests of presenter Anne MacDonald, they not only report on the results, but also tell us what fascinates them about their topics, how their research topic has developed in everyday university life and what contribution they are making to the current challenges of our time. And along the way, they also reveal a little about themselves. It's worth listening in: the seven episodes will be released one after the other on a weekly basis from 13 January 2026 and can be found on the Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Music platforms.
More about FABU e.V.
The Friends and Alumni of the University of Wuppertal (FABU) is an interdisciplinary association that forms a strong network for the more than 21,500 students, alumni, members and partners of the University of Wuppertal. The association supports a wide range of projects at the University of Wuppertal and sees itself as a bridge between research and business. Further information - including membership - can be found on the FABU website.
