Congratulations Maggi: Dr. Margareta Hellmann was awarded the Runner-up Award of the Gesellschaft für Biochemie und Molekularbiologie GBM.

Today, our doctoral alumna and current post-doctoral researcher Dr. Margareta “Maggi” Hellmann won the Runner-up Award of the German Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology GBM among last year’s best doctoral theses. We are not too surprised, but very happy: congratulations Maggi! For her doctoral thesis, she had investigated the influence of chitin deacetylation and the resulting pattern of acetylation in the chitosans thus produced on their bioactivities. Doesn’t sound like an exciting topic worth an award? Think twice! True, it has been a rather academic question for more than two decades – after all, whether this pattern is random or blockwise, who cares? Well, Maggi did. First, she proved both parties wrong: it is neither random nor blockwise, it is rather regular. So what?, you will say. Ah, but second, she found that this pattern crucially influences the biological functionalities of chitosans – whether they have antimicrobial properties and can be used as a preservative in food and cosmetics, whether they have plant strengthening activities to be used as a plant biostimulant in agriculture, whether they have immunostimulating activities to be used as feed additive or vaccine adjuvans, whether… you name it. This discovery, the methods she developed to prove it, and the analyses she performed to evaluate its significance, all this has so far led to an amazing 12 publications, and another dozen are in different stages of the publication process. Less than one year after graduation! Amazing.