Carola Haas Receives Alfred Hauptmann Award

The neurobiologist Prof. Dr. Carola Haas from the University of Freiburg has received the Alfred Hauptmann Award. This honor comes with a prize of 10,000 Euros and is awarded every two years to the best academic research in clinical and experimental epileptology in the German-speaking region. Haas, who is an executive board member of the Cluster of Excellence BrainLinks-BrainTools and whose research lab is located in the Neurocenter of the Freiburg University Medical Center, won the award for her outstanding study in 2016 (see press release: www.pr.uni-freiburg.de/pm-en/press-releases-2016/pm.2016-02-09.18-en). She will be sharing the prize money with a team of Swiss researchers including Dr. Gian Marco De Marchis from the University of Basel and Dr. Deborah Pugin from the Geneva University Hospitals.

In her study, Haas focused on the developmental disorders in the temporal lobes of humans that often occur in connection with drug-resistant epilepsy. Using a genetic procedure called whole transcriptome screening, she was able to identify factors in the cerebral cortex that cause disorders in the myelin sheaths surrounding cell protuberances that leave these areas more exposed to electric voltage, which may increase the risk of a seizure.

Haas earned her postdoctoral habilitation qualification at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Freiburg and is the head of the Experimental Epilepsy Research Group in the Department of Neurosurgery at the Medical Center – University of Freiburg. She has been interested in epilepsy research for some time and has published over 30 articles about this disorder in well-known journals in the last ten years.

The Alfred Hauptmann Award is given out by the German and Austrian Society of Epilepsy Research in collaboration with the Swiss Epilepsy League at their annual conference. The award is named after the German neurologist Alfred Hauptmann, who discovered the antiepileptic effect of phenobarbital in 1912 and had to flee Germany in 1933 due to his Jewish heritage.

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Carola Haas
Head of Experimental Epilepsy Research
Department of Neurosurgery
Freiburg University Medical Clinic
Phone: +49 (0)761 / 270 - 52950
E-Mail: carola.haas@uniklinik-freiburg.de

Levin Sottru
Science Communication
BrainLinks-BrainTools Cluster of Excellence
University of Freiburg
Phone: +49 (0)761/203-3625
Email: sottru@blbt.uni-freiburg.de