The Dresden based biophysicist Prof. Stephan Grill of the Biotechnology Center of the TU Dresden was appointed as Max Planck Fellow by the Max Planck Society. With his research Stephan Grill wants to find out how cells generate forces that provide tissues and organisms with a form. In order to understand these processes, Stephan connects biology with physics and theoretical physics. This multidisciplinary approach bridges molecular mechanics with cell and tissue mechanics.
For his scientific success, Stephan Grill received several awards: 2009 he got the Award for Research Cooperation and Highest Excellence in Science (ARCHES) of the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research and the Minerva Foundation. In 2010 he received the EMBO Young Investigator Award and in 2011 the Paul Ehrlich und Ludwig Darmstätdter-Nachwuchspreis. The Binder Innovationspreis of the German Society for Cell Biology was awarded to Stephan Grill in 2013.
The program „Max Planck Fellows“ was initiated by the Max Planck Society in 2005, in order to strengthen the ties between university professors and researchers at Max Planck Institutes. The work as Max Planck Fellow is limited to five years but can be extended for another five years and contains a research group at a Max Planck institute.