Biochemist Volker Haucke and his team investigate the molecular mechanisms of endocytosis and endolysosomal membrane dynamics and their role in cell signaling and neurotransmission. The overall objective of Haucke’s work is to investigate the mechanics of exocytosis and endocytosis and endolysosomal function and their regulation by proteins and lipids and to use this know-how to develop new strategies for acute chemical and pharmacological disorders. Volker Haucke’s services to science were recognized through his nomination as a member of Leopoldina – the German National Academy of Sciences and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He has been a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) since 2014. In 2017 he received the Avanti Award of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB).

The Feldberg Prize was started by the pharmacologist Prof. Wilhelm Feldberg, who in 1933 as a Jewish scientist at the Institute of Physiology, Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin, had to leave Germany; he emigrated to England. After the war he started the Feldberg Foundation with his restitution money. Every year since 1961 the Foundation has presented awards to one British and one German scientist. The winners choose an institute in the partner country that is to present them with the award, and where they will hold an honorary lecture, the Feldberg Lecture.

Professor Volker Haucke

Volker Haucke earned his doctorate in 1997 at the Biozentrum (Center for Molecular Life Sciences) of the University of Basel, Switzerland, with studies he did on mitochondrial biogenesis in the research group led by Gottfried (Jeff) Schatz. Following postdoctoral research as a Fellow of the EMBO and the Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) in the group led by Pietro De Camilli at Yale University School of Medicine, he founded his own laboratory at the University of Göttingen as a member of the EMBO Young Investigator Program. In 2003 Haucke was appointed a professor of biochemistry at Freie Universität Berlin. Since 2012 he has been the director of the Leibniz Research Institute of Molecular Pharmacology, a professor of molecular pharmacology at Freie Universität Berlin, and a member of the NeuroCure Cluster of Excellence.