27.03.2024 Dr. Katharina Dobs receives Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Prize

German Research Foundation honors Gießener perceptual researcher - visual perception of objects in focus

Foto Katharina Dobs
Foto: Kris Brewer

The Giessen-based perceptual researcher Dr. Katharina Dobs has notched up another success: The psychologist and computer scientist has received one of the 200,000 Euro Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prizes from the German Research Foundation (DFG). Last autumn, the research group leader at the Visual Cognition & Computational Neuroscience Lab at the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen (JLU) had been researching how we recognize people, objects and places, already obtained one of the European Research Council’s coveted ERC Starting Grants.
 
"Dr. Dobs is breaking new ground in the field of visual perception of objects with state-of-the-art methods - the starting point for almost all our everyday activities", notes the first vice-president of JLU, Prof. Dr Katharina Lorenz. "I congratulate her on this highly deserved award and am very happy that we have this outstanding scientist in the ranks of our excellent perception research."
 
How do we recognize a friend in a crowd, navigate familiar places or choose food and other items? Dr. Dobs explores one of our most basic and fascinating skills: how we can visually recognize and interpret complex scenes so quickly and effortlessly. One focus of her work is on functional specialization in the human brain. This phenomenon describes the tendency of certain brain regions to focus on particular visual processes such as face recognition. In her research she combines mathematical modelling with experimental studies on humans. Although the recognition of objects feels effortless, it requires a major computational effort involving almost one third of the 16 billion neurons in the cortex. Damage to the corresponding brain regions, for example, caused by a stroke or injury can have devastating consequences for everyday life.

In October 2020, Dr Dobs took over the leadership of her own research group at JLU. Previously, she worked for three years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), including a Feodor Lynen post-doctoral fellowship.  Before her stay in the USA, she spent about two years researching at CerCo-CNRS in Toulouse, France, with a post-doctoral fellowship funded by the DFG. Dobs holds a PhD from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics and studied computer science and psychology at the Philipps-Universität Marburg.
 
Her working group is interconnected with a diverse network spanning the Collaborative Research Center "Cardinal Mechanisms of Perception" (SFB/TRR 135), the cluster project "The Adaptive Mind" (TAM), which is currently preparing a full proposal in the excellence strategy of the Federation and the Länder (Speakers: Prof. Dr. Roland Fleming and Prof. Professor Dr Katja Fiehler, JLU) and the Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior (JLU, UMR, TUDa). Katharina Dobs also teaches at JLU in the international master’s degree programme Mind, Brain and Behavior, which combines elements of psychology, cognitive neuroscience and behavioral research.
 
Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize
 
The Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize, named after the physicist and former president of the German Research Foundation (DFG), has been awarded to scientists in an early career stage since 1977. It is intended to be a recognition of and incentive for outstanding scientific work, with ten prizes each endowed with 200,000 euros. The prize money can be used for up to three years for further scientific research

More information
www.dfg.de/en/foerderung/foerdermoglichkeiten/preise/leibnitz-preis

contact
Dr Katharina Dobs
Department of General Psychology at JLU
Visual Cognition & Computational Neuroscience Lab
Telephone: 0641 99-26108
E-mail:

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