Newcomer wins the LifeScienceXplained Award 2025
How can light become a weapon against cancer? Naomi Weitzel’s science slam on rare-earth nanoparticles earned her the LifeScienceXplained | Sartorius Award for New Communication and a €15,000 prize. Her research shows how tiny particles can transform infrared light into high-energy light - opening new possibilities for targeted cancer therapies with fewer side effects.
This article is posted on Sartorius Blog.
With her science slam "How Light Becomes Stronger: The Superpower of Tiny Particles" the PhD student from the Institute of Analytical Chemistry at the University of Regensburg, convinced the LSX jury with her vivid presentation on how nanoparticles can convert low-energy infrared light into high-energy light. Using the metaphor of a piggy bank that stores infrared energy and releases it in bundles, she illustrated a process that opens new possibilities in medicine—particularly in cancer treatment. Future therapies using these light-storing particles could target tumors more precisely, causing significantly, minimizing side effects and protecting healthy tissue.
In its fifth edition, we have once again received exciting and even broader submissions for the LifeScienceXplained Award. Naomi Weitzel is the deserving winner of this year’s competition because she explains the fundamental principles of physics and their potential benefits for medicine in a very clear way. By building this bridge, she highlights the special value and great strength of interdisciplinary research.
Prof. Dr. Viola Priesemann, chairperson of the jury and Professor at the Max-Planck-Institut and the University of Göttingen
The award ceremony took place on November 6 as part of the Göttingen Literature Festival on the Sartorius Campus in Göttingen. Partners of the event were the Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) and the Göttinger Literaturherbst.
Alongside Naomi, the finalists included: Dr. Eva Schäffer, neurologist at Kiel University Hospital with her science slam „Prevention and Parkinson's Disease“ and Bent Freiwald, science journalist and podcaster, together with ACB Stories and the podcast episode „Alzheimer's - Dangerous Slime in the Brain“.
The jury for the LifeScienceXplained Award 2025 consisted of six independent experts, healthcare entrepreneur Inga Bergen, Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Brück from the University Medical Center Göttingen, Anja Martini from NDR, last year's winner Dr. Franca Parianen, Dr.-Ing. Jan Patrick Pietras from myotwin and Prof. Dr. Viola Priesemann from the Max-Planck-Institute and the University of Göttingen.
The event also featured the presentation of the NDR Non-Fiction Prize, endowed with €15,000. This award went to author Eva Biringer for her book "Unharmed. Women and Pain” (Original title: „Unversehrt. Frauen und Schmerz"), which explores how women's pain is systematically underestimated in medicine.
