The Dr.-Günther- und Imme-Wille-Stiftung (Foundation) provides € 10,000 annually to honor the outstanding work of a young scientist of the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf in the field of medicine including related life sciences fields.

Two examples from the last few years:
In 2020, Dr. Margaretha A. Skowron was given the Research Award of the Dr. Günther and Imme Wille Foundation for her work on “CDK4/6 inhibition presents as a therapeutic option for paediatric and adult germ cell tumours and induces cell cycle arrest and apoptosis via canonical and non-canonical mechanism”. Skowron and a team of authors report in the “British Journal of Cancer" on the use of two drugs that present a possible treatment option for therapy-resistant germ cell tumours.

The Wille Research Award for 2021 was awarded to Dr. Gizem Inak-Girrbach for her work on: “Defective metabolic programming impairs early neuronal morphogenesis in neural cultures and an organoid model of Leigh syndrome”. Her work shows that model systems made from stem cells (induced pluripotent stem cells) from patients open the door to a better understanding of the pathological mechanism of the rare Leigh syndrome.

Accepting applications in 2023 are finished.

Research Award of the Dr. Günther and Imme Wille Foundation (information from 2023 as reference in German)