Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the Animals 2021 Young Investigator Award is Dr. Katharina Hohlbaum.

Dr. Katharina Hohlbaum is a postdoctoral research assistant at Institute of Animal Welfare, Animal Behavior and Laboratory Animal Science, Department of Veterinary Medicine, Freie Universität Berlin. Dr. Hohlbaum’s research interests are the development of refinement strategies for laboratory mice, including automatic monitoring of wellbeing based on facial expressions, automatic monitoring in the home cage, cognitive and affect-stimulating enrichment, systematic and animal-based severity assessment, non-aversive handling techniques and animal training, improvement of housing conditions of male mice, barbering, and geriatric mice; and the synthesis of intelligent behavior of mice in an interdisciplinary approach, including investigation and modeling of problem-solving behavior in individuals and in a social context. Dr. Hohlbaum received her PhD in 2018 and has an outstanding publication record, comprising 14 publications in peer-reviewed international journals. She is clearly a rising star in the field of animal welfare, laboratory animal science, and veterinary ethics. Please join us in congratulating Dr. Hohlbaum for her outstanding achievements.

As the awardee, Dr. Hohlbaum will receive an honorarium of 2000 CHF, an offer to publish a paper free of charge before the end of 2022 in Animals after peer review, and an engraved plaque.

We would like to thank all the nominators from various fields of study for their participation and all the Award Committee Members for their evaluation of the many excellent nominations.

Kind Regards,
Animals 2021 Young Investigator Evaluation Committee