The four FABU doctoral prizes were funded by the Thomas Meyer Foundation. The first prize - worth 2,000 euros - goes to Elisabeth Koch. Franziska Hörner, Max Julian Bondorf and Annkathrin Sonder were awarded three second prizes, each worth 1,000 euros.

• Food chemist Elisabeth Koch impressed the jury with her dissertation "Occurrence and formation of oxidised fatty acids in edible oils and their use as novel parameters to evaluate oil quality and authenticity", with which she was able to make a significant contribution to a better understanding of the chemical changes in edible oils during production, processing and storage.
• Biologist Franziska Hörner 's doctoral thesis "The Importance of Family Bonds and Their Impact on Social Behaviour of African Elephants. An Analysis of Loxodonta africana's Olfaction, Greeting Behaviour, Holding Systems, and in situ vs. ex situ Living Calves" on the social bonds and behaviour of zoo elephants. In her work, she succeeds in clarifying key aspects of the conditions for animal-friendly husbandry and bringing together important "players" for implementation.
• Electrical engineer Max Julian Bondorf completed his doctorate on the subject of "Condition assessment of medium and low-voltage cable networks using broadband powerline communication". His thesis is dedicated to a timely and economically relevant topic in the field of energy supply systems. He pursues an innovative idea for recording the condition of cables and translates it into a practical system.
• As part of her dissertation "Rose Ausländer's unpublished estate poems. Critical Edition and Interpretation", Annkathrin Sonder developed and realised an innovative, specially adapted concept according to current editorial standards for a book edition of 64 previously unpublished poems from the estate of the Jewish poet Rose Ausländer.

FABU also awards three prizes to outstanding graduates - donated by Stadtsparkasse Wuppertal. Jacqueline Owczorz will be honoured with the first prize of 2,000 euros. Two second prizes - each worth 1,500 euros - go to Antonin Königsfeld and Lisa Wunsch.

• Jacqueline Owczorz, a graduate of the Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, examines the challenges and problem areas of the critical transition process for family businesses from a company-related perspective as well as from the overarching perspective of external management consultants in her Master's thesis "The generational change in family businesses". Among other things, she derives recommendations for the design of a consulting programme.
• Industrial engineer Antonin Königsfeld receives the Young Talent Award for his bachelor's thesis "Investigation of XAI methods for quality prediction in arc welding using discrete representations of a vector quantised variational autoencoder". In it, he deals with real-time capable and cost-efficient methods for checking the quality of weld seams in the welding process, thereby contributing valuable findings to an important field of modern industrial production.
• Another FABU Young Talent Award goes to Lisa Wunsch from the Sociology department, which she received for her Bachelor's thesis "Does Specialisation Matter? Analysing the Link Between Research Focus and Academic Career Advancement". Taking German sociology as a case study, she uses an innovative combination of methods to investigate the question of whether specialisation in a particular subject area promotes career success in academia.

As part of the official award ceremony, Prof Katja Pfeiffer, Dean of the School of Art and Design, will also present the Stella Baum Art Prize. It enables art students to present their work to a wider audience and is awarded by the university's rectorate with the support of the Friends and Alumni Association of the University of Wuppertal (FABU).

This year's DAAD prize goes to Ludrila Ingrid Kouam Tuedem (link to press release). The business mathematics student is about to complete her Bachelor's degree and is involved in voluntary work, including providing free tutoring.

Note for the editorial team

For further information and to contact individual award winners, please contact the university press office.