3rd February 2025
On Friday, January 31, 2025, Maastricht University awarded an honorary doctorate to Prof. Katrin Amunts in recognition of her outstanding and inspiring scientific achievements. The world-renowned neuroscientist received the certificate in a ceremony with Rector Prof. Pamela Habibović in the Sint-Janskerk. Every year, the university commemorates its foundation in 1976 with the ceremonial "Dies Natalis".
Katrin Amunts is Director of the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1) at Forschungszentrum Jülich and Director of the C. and O. Vogt Institute for Brain Research at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. From 2016 until its successful completion in 2023, the brain researcher was Scientific Director of the European flagship "Human Brain Project" (HBP) - with 155 collaborating institutions from 19 countries and a total budget of €607 million, the HBP was one of the largest research projects in Europe. Katrin Amunts and her research team were able to map the human brain on an unprecedented scale using extremely high-resolution and data-intensive methods. In doing so, Amunts also pioneered the interdisciplinary combination of neuroscience and supercomputing. The results of this research are combined in a globally unique 3D brain atlas, which is openly accessible to scientists from all over the world in the HBP successor project EBRAINS, in which Amunts is at the forefront as joint CEO.
The laudators Prof. Rainer Göbel and Prof. Alard Roebroeck from the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience both emphasized the vision, pioneering spirit and perseverance with which Katrin Amunts has achieved the seemingly impossible and thus made groundbreaking advances in neuroscience over the past decades. Alard Roebroeck referred to the multimodal, multiscale Julich Brain Atlas, which has benefited brain research worldwide. Rainer Göbel emphasized the scientist's close collaboration with Maastricht University, which led to the establishment of a new degree course. There, future brain researchers will be trained at the interface of psychology, neuroscience, medicine and artificial intelligence.
Katrin Amunts' work has received numerous awards. The scientist is a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, a full member of the German National Academy of Sciences and Engineering (acatech) and a full member of the Class for Natural Sciences of Medicine in the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts. From 2012 to 2020, she was one of 26 members of the German Ethics Council. Katrin Amunts was awarded the prestigious Hector Science Prize in 2022, the same year the then North Rhine-Westphalian Science Minister Isabel Pfeiffer-Poensgen presented Katrin Amunts with the Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2023, she received the international Justine and Yves Sergent Award.
Recording of the ceremony (conferment of an honorary doctorate on Prof. Katrin Amunts from min. 47:00)
Contact Person
Erhard Zeiss
Wissenschaftlicher Kommunikationsreferent
- Institute of Neurosciences and Medicine (INM)
- Strukturelle und funktionelle Organisation des Gehirns (INM-1)
