Dr Patrick Weigelt is the 2020 winner of the Early Career Award

Patrick Weigelt, a young researcher in the field of biodiversity, macroecology, and biogeography at the University of Göttingen, will receive the Leopoldina Early Career Award 2020 presented by the Commerzbank Foundation. The prize is endowed with €30,000. The National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina honors him for developing biodiversity databases and for his research on plant biodiversity. Weigelt is investigating plant species on islands and how humans contribute to their spread outside their areas of origin. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the official award ceremony is scheduled for September 2021 on the occasion of the Leopoldina's Annual Assembly themed "Biodiversity and the Future of Variety". As a biodiversity researcher and biogeographer, Weigelt investigates plant species diversity on islands and analyzes the changes over time on a regional and global level. In his studies, he researches how island characteristics such as climate, size, isolation, geology, and sea level fluctuations influence plant diversity and species composition.