Sina Schwarze has been awarded the Otto Hahn Medal 2025

The Max Planck Society honors up to 30 young scientists each year for outstanding scientific achievements   

Sina Schwarze, postdoc at the Center for Lifespan Psychology, was awarded the Otto Hahn Medal 2025 for her dissertation in the Human Sciences Section.   

In her dissertation The Development of Flexible Behavior, completed in the context of the International Max Planck Research School on the Life Course (LIFE), she explored how and why cognitive flexibility — the ability to switch between tasks or ways of thinking — changes during childhood. She investigated age differences and training-related changes in behavior as well as in the underlying brain processes. She is particularly interested in how experiences and developmental stages interact during the development of the brain and cognitive abilities in childhood. This question is also the focus of her current research as a postdoctoral fellow, where she is investigating how individual differences affect training success and how targeted practice changes structural connections in the brain. 

Each year, the Max Planck Society honors young scientists for their exceptional scientific achievements, which are typically related to their doctoral thesis.  

Further information can be found on the website of the Max Planck Society.