Press release: Professor Dr. Ulrike Beisiegel elected to Presidency of Göttingen University

Nr. 54/2010 - 23.03.2010

Senate votes unanimously for the University’s first woman President

Professor Dr. Ulrike Beisiegel is to be the next president of Göttingen University. The biochemist from Hamburg received the unanimous approval of the University Senate today, their vote subsequently being endorsed by the Foundation Committee for the University. Ulrike Beisiegel will be the first woman to head the University and will succeed the current holder of the office, Professor Dr. Kurt von Figura, who chose not to stand for a further term. Her six-year term of office begins on 1 January, 2011.

Professor Dr. Jörg-Martin Jehle, spokesperson for the Senate, stated: “The Senate has cast its unanimous vote in favour of Professor Beisiegel as future President. She is excellently qualified for the office and has set out convincingly how, in cooperation with the staff, she intends to enhance the development of the University over the coming years. We wish her every success in doing so.”

The chairman of the Foundation Committee, Dr. Wilhelm Krull, said: “With her many years of experience in science and university politics Professor Beisiegel is outstandingly well equipped to meet the tasks to be accomplished in Göttingen during the coming years. I congratulate her on her election and wish her all the very best in her new position.”

“I greatly look forward to contributing to the performance of excellent research at the University of Göttingen and to joining forces with the Faculties to improve the conditions of study here. Together with the non-university research institutions, I would like to take further the development of the Göttingen research campus”, explains Professor Beisiegel.

Ulrike Beisiegel (b. 1952) studied biology in Münster and human biology in Marburg, gaining her doctorate in human biology in 1979 after doctoral studies at the Marburg Medical School. She proceeded to a postdoc position at the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Texas (Dallas, USA) where she worked in the team led by Josef L. Goldstein and Michael S. Brown, researchers who were subsequently awarded the Nobel Prize. After returning to Marburg to work for two years as a research assistant, in 1984 she moved to the Hamburg University Hospital where she worked as researcher and lecturer. In 1990 Ulrike Beisiegel gained her professorial qualification (Habilitation) at the University of Hamburg, where she was appointed to a C3 professorship in 1996. Since 2001 Professor Beisiegel has held a C4-professorship and the Directorship of the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Hamburg-Eppendorf University Hospital.

Professor Beisiegel is spokesperson of the German Research Foundation’s Ombuds Committee and chairs the Scientific Commission of the German Council of Science and Humanities. She is also a Senator of the Leibniz Association and sits on several national and international scientific boards. Professor Beisiegel received an honorary doctorate from the Swedish University of Umeå and is holder of numerous other awards.