We warmly congratulate our doctoral researcher Annika Mahn on winning the Albrecht-Daniel-Thaer Young Talent Award for her outstanding Master’s thesis. The prize is awarded annually by the Förderverein für Agrar- und Gartenbauwissenschaften e.V. (Association for the Advancement of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences) to one outstanding Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD graduate respectively at the Albrecht Daniel Thaer Institute of Humboldt University. Annika Mahn was honoured for her research, which she carried out at the Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering and Bioeconomy (ATB) in collaboration with Humboldt University of Berlin.
In her Master’s thesis, entitled ‘Method development for quantifying condensation processes in thin grain beds’, Annika Mahn addressed a highly relevant topic in post-harvest technology. The thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr Barbara Sturm, Scientific Director at ATB and Professor of “Agricultural Engineering in Bioeconomic Systems” at Humboldt University of Berlin, and Prof. Dr Susanne Huyskens-Keil, Honorary Professor of “Quality Assurance of Plant-Based Foods” at Humboldt University of Berlin. The work was actively supported by Dr Thomas Hoffmann, Head of the Department of System Process Engineering at ATB.
Particularly noteworthy: this is already the second time that Annika Mahn has received this prestigious award. Back in 2024, she was honoured with the Thaer Award for her bachelor’s thesis “Systematic influencing of grain quality as a means of developing methods for falling number measurement”, which she completed at HU Berlin.
Prof. Dr Barbara Sturm, Scientific Director of ATB, offers her warm congratulations: “We are delighted that Annika Mahn has received this award, and as her supervisor, this success fills me with particular pride. It is a well-deserved recognition of her excellent scientific work. It impressively demonstrates how fruitful the close cooperation between ATB and Humboldt University is. Supporting young talents is one of our core tasks, and it is a pleasure to see young researchers such as Ms Mahn realising their potential here with us. Congratulations.”
Annika Mahn is currently pursuing her doctoral thesis at ATB in the Department of System Process Engineering under the supervision of Prof. Dr Barbara Sturm. Her doctoral research is a direct result of the excellent collaboration during her Master’s thesis at the institute. Furthermore, Annika Mahn is particularly active in institute life as a doctoral student representative. We wish her every success with her work and look forward to her future contributions to science.