News

Benjamin Schäfer, who was a postdoctoral researcher in the Centre for Complex Systems between 2019 and 2021 working with Professor Christian Beck, will receive the prestigious 2026 Ecology Prize of the Viktor & Sigrid Dulger Foundation, awarded by the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. The prize recognises outstanding achievements by young researchers based in the German state of Baden-Württemberg who develop solutions for ecological problems.

The Heidelberg Academy particularly highlights Benjamins research towards building stable and resilient power grids by combining physical modelling and transparent, explainable AI methods. An important contribution was a study on data-driven load profiles and residential electricity consumption, which originated from his time at QMUL and was published in Nature Communications in 2022. Benjamin currently holds a tenure-track professorship at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and leads the Helmholtz Young Investigator Group "Data-Driven Analysis of Complex Systems" (DRACOS).

Link to original press release (in German): https://www.hadw-bw.de/sites/default/files/2026-04/PM_Akademiepreise-2026.pdf