MEMBERSHIP:Denise Manahan-Vaughan new at Leopoldina
The speaker of SFB 874 is now a member of the Neuroscience Section
Prof. Dr. Denise Manahan-Vaughan was elected to the German National Academy of Sciences – Leopoldina in August 2022. The brain researcher is the speaker of the SFB 874 as well as prorector of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum and will henceforth be a member of the Neurosciences Section of the National Academy of Sciences. “I hold the Leopoldina in the highest esteem and feel very honoured that it has elected me as a member,” the scientist says happily.
About the person
Denise Manahan-Vaughan was born in Ireland and is a brain researcher. She researches molecular and cellular mechanisms of memory formation in the healthy and diseased brain and has published over 170 scientific papers on this subject. After studying natural sciences at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Ireland, she completed her PhD in neuropharmacology at TCD at the age of 27. After her PhD, she moved to the Leibniz Institute of Neurobiology in Magdeburg and five years later obtained a habilitation in physiology from Otto-von-Guericke University. After several years as a research group leader at the Johannes Müller Institute of Physiology at the Charité, Berlin, she accepted the appointment as Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the newly founded “International Graduate School of Neuroscience” (IGSN) at the RUB in 2003.
In 2007, she turned down national and international calls to accept RUB’s call to lead the Department of Neurophysiology at the Faculty of Medicine instead. In 2010, she successfully recruited the Collaborative Research Centre 874 (2010 to 2022) on the topic of “Integration and Representation of Sensory Processes” and co-founded the “Research Department of Neuroscience” in the same year. Since 2017, she has been Director of the Institute of Physiology at the Faculty of Medicine. In 2006, she founded the “Network of European Neuroscience Schools”, which links graduate programmes in neuroscience across Europe, and in 2019 she founded “NeuroNexxt”, a digital platform to increase the international visibility and networking of female neuroscientists.
Prorector since November 2021
Denise Manahan-Vaughan has been the Ruhr University’s Prorector for Structure, Strategy and Planning since 1 November 2021.
About the Leopoldina
As Germany’s National Academy of Sciences, the Leopoldina and its approximately 1,600 members take an independent and public stance on the scientific foundations of political and social issues. It represents German science in international bodies and contributes to a scientifically enlightened society.