Mannheim Psychologist Awarded Most Important German Prize for Early-Stage Researchers

Press release, 5 March 2020
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The award is granted by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in recognition of the extraordinary scientific achievements of early-stage researchers. This year, ten researchers will receive the prize in Berlin, each of these with a value of 20,000 euros.

In her research, Dr. Monika Undorf looks at how humans reflect on and actively control their own learning and memory processes. This capacity is a decisive factor for successful lifelong learning. By means of innovative scientific methods, Undorf explores the cognitive processes underlying metamemory and how we acquire knowledge using our memory. In one of her most recent projects, she examined whether cheating in tests causes students to overestimate their performance in later tests due to them falsely attributing their good results to high ability.

The Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize is considered the most important award promoting early-stage researchers in Germany. Every year since 1977, it is granted to researchers who are at an early stage of their scientific careers. The aim of the prize is to recognize their outstanding achievements and at the same time to motivate the award winners to continue their careers independently. The award is named after the nuclear physicist and former president of the German Research Foundation, Heinz Maier-Leibnitz.

Press release of the DFG (only in German)

Contact:
Dr. Monika Undorf
Margarete von Wrangell-Fellow
Chair for Cognitive Psychology and Individual Differences
University of Mannheim
Phone: +49 621 181-3462
E-mail: undorfmail-uni-mannheim.de

Yvonne Kaul
Research Communication
University of Mannheim
Phone: +49 621 181-1266
E-mail: kaulmail-uni-mannheim.de