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Bayreuth-based young physicist Dr. Winfried Schmidt has been awarded the 2025 Dissertation Prize of the Franco-German University (FGU). His dissertation focuses on the theoretical physical description of the directed movement of biological cells.
From left to right: Eva Martha Eckkrammer, President of the FGU, Dr. Winfried Schmidt, Dr. Benjamin Hötzer from Ignite Group Germany GmbH - © Jacek Ruta/DFH-UFA
The Dissertation Prizes of the Franco-German University, a network of 210 universities in Germany and France, are awarded annually for the best Franco-German dissertations supported by the FGU. The awards ceremony alternates between the German Embassy in Paris and the French Embassy in Berlin. This year's winner of the Innovation Prize in the field of Engineering and Natural Sciences, as well as Computer Science, is Dr. Winfried Schmidt, an alumnus of the University of Bayreuth. The award, worth €2,000, is sponsored by Ignite Group Germany GmbH. The ceremony took place at the end of January in Berlin, attended by the French Ambassador to Germany, François Delattre, the FGU leadership, the award winners and their guests, as well as the prize sponsors.
Schmidt began his undergraduate studies in physics at the Bayreuth campus in 2012. During his subsequent master's degree, also in Bayreuth, he spent seven months at the University of Southern California in the USA as part of his master's thesis research. "This time abroad confirmed for me how enriching it can be for both scientific and personal development to look beyond one's own horizons," says Schmidt. During his master's, he was accepted into the elite "Biological Physics" programme, which he completed with distinction, achieving an excellent grade in the elite course as well.
During his doctoral studies at the Senior Professorship of Theoretical Physics under Prof. Dr. Walter Zimmermann, Schmidt travelled to Paris for the first time to attend a workshop organised by the "Living Fluids" graduate school of the FGU. "I was immediately fascinated by France and the French language," says Schmidt. He was awarded a one-year DAAD scholarship and spent what he describes as a formative year at the Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire de Physique (LIPhy) in Grenoble. There, he collaborated with Prof. Dr. Chaouqi Misbah, a Senior Fellow in the International Fellowship Programme of the University of Bayreuth and a key partner in the "Biological Physics" elite programme, as well as Dr. Alexander Farutin, another long-standing research collaborator. His main research focus was on the physics of cell migration. Even before arriving in Grenoble, Schmidt had acquired basic French skills, which he quickly improved during his stay. He actively engaged at his host institute by giving talks on his research and contributing to the development of an online repository containing useful resources for international newcomers at LIPhy.
During his dissertation, Schmidt discovered a physical principle that allows for the contactless separation of softer from harder (or diseased from healthy) blood cells by periodically moving a liquid containing different cells back and forth through microchannels. His theoretical predictions have since been confirmed by experiments on the separation of blood cells and solid particles. Another key finding of his research suggests a method to hinder bacterial microswimmers from moving against the flow in narrow channels—an insight that could help reduce infection risks in medical applications. Using computational modelling and simulations, he also demonstrated that so-called amoeboid-moving cells can propel themselves solely through actin polymerisation, challenging the prevailing paradigm in the field that such cells require molecular motors to move.
Schmidt regularly presented his research findings at international scientific conferences during his PhD, establishing a strong professional network. After completing his doctorate summa cum laude, he returned to LIPhy with a postdoctoral fellowship from the Centre National d’Études Spatiales, where he continues his research on the effects of near-weightlessness on cellular movement. "Given his career trajectory, this may not come as a complete surprise, yet it remains remarkable that Winfried Schmidt was offered this postdoctoral position a full six months before completing his doctorate—following an evaluation by a selection committee in Paris that highly praised his research, presentation, discussion skills, and project proposal for his postdoc period," adds Zimmermann.
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