Prof. Dr Johannes Grave, Prof. Dr Martin Kümmel, Prof. Dr Kirsten Küsel, and Prof. Dr Birgit Weber

Quadruple election to the Saxon Academy of Sciences

The Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig has elected four researchers from the University of Jena as new members

Prof. Dr Johannes Grave, Prof. Dr Martin Kümmel, Prof. Dr Kirsten Küsel, and Prof. Dr Birgit Weber

Collage: Jens Meyer, Jan-Peter Kasper, Anna Schroll, Anne Günther

Published: 13 April 2026, 16:00 | By: Marco K?rner
Source article

Four researchers from Friedrich Schiller University Jena have been elected to the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig. At its spring meeting on 10 April 2026, the Academy officially inducted art historian Prof. Dr Johannes Grave, Indo-Europeanist Prof. Dr Martin Joachim Kümmel, geomicrobiologist Prof. Dr Kirsten Küsel and chemist Prof. Dr Birgit Weber as new members. Grave, Kümmel and Weber were admitted as full members, while Küsel was admitted as a corresponding member.

About the personalities

Prof. Dr Johannes Grave
Image: Jens Meyer (University of Jena)

Johannes Grave has held the Chair of Modern Art History at the University of Jena since 2019. His research focuses on art around 1800, particularly Romanticism and Goethe, as well as questions of image theory and Italian and French painting from the Quattrocento to the 19th century. Grave is the spokesperson for the University of Jena’s Cluster of Excellence ‘Imaginamics’, received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2020, and was elected Vice-President of the German Research Foundation in 2023.

Prof. Dr Martin Joachim Kümmel
Image: Jan-Peter Kasper (University of Jena)

Martin Joachim Kümmel has been Professor of Indo-European Studies at Friedrich Schiller University since 2013. His research focuses on the history and relationships of the Indo-European languages – a language family to which most of today’s European languages and numerous Asian languages belong. His research focuses on the history of sounds, grammar and vocabulary, particularly of the Indo-Iranian and Anatolian languages, as well as on fundamental questions of language change and language contact. In 2022, he was elected to the Academia Europaea.

Prof. Dr Kirsten Küsel
Image: Jens Meyer (University of Jena)

Kirsten Küsel conducts research in Jena at the interface of microbial ecology and hydrobiogeochemistry. Her work focuses on microbial communities in soils, water bodies and the deep subsurface, their role in biogeochemical cycles, and their response to environmental changes. Küsel has been working at the University of Jena since 2004, has been spokesperson for the Cluster of Excellence ‘Balance of the Microverse’ since 2022, and was elected to the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2025.

Prof. Dr Birgit Weber
Image: Anne Günther (University of Jena)

Birgit Weber returned to the University of Jena in 2023 and is Professor of Inorganic Chemistry and Director of the Institute of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry. Her research focuses primarily on 3d metals and switchable spin states of metal complexes, which are relevant to fields including sensor technology, catalysis and data processing. In 2024, she was awarded a grant to coordinate Priority Programme 2491, ‘Interactive Spin-State Switching’, of the German Research Foundation (DFG).

A distinguished learned society since 1846?

The Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig was founded in 1846 and is a long-established scholarly society that sees itself as a forum for interdisciplinary academic exchange. Its projects within the Academy Programme represent a prominent focus of humanities research on the international stage. Admission as a member is regarded as a high academic honour.