The Sparkasse Essen awards six candidates with the Science Prize for their dissertations. Each of them receives 5,000 euros. The certificates are given to the winners by Vice-Rector Prof. Dagmar Führer-Sakel and Helmut Schiffer, Chairman of the Board of Management of Sparkasse Essen. The prize, which has been awarded since 1989, honours outstanding achievements in medicine, humanities and economics.

In his dissertation, Andreas Thieme (sub-project A05) examined whether the human cerebellum is involved in storage processes of motor abilities in early childhood by means of the so-called “blink reflex”.