Prices and Awards
The Frankfurt Foundation Quality of Medicines (FFQM) intends to honor outstanding initiatives and activities in the field of medicinal product quality through awards and prices. This will be realized as an independent initiative as well as in cooperation with national or international Societies and Associations.
Awardees:
Quality of Medicines Award
- 2024 Dr. Tim Menzen, Coriolis Pharma
- 2023 Sophie Luise Meiser and Jonas Pielenhofer, Univ. Mainz
- 2022 Dr. Cathrin Hauk, Univ. Tübingen
- 2021 Jun.-Prof. Dr. Oliver Scherf-Clavel, Univ. Würzburg
Pearls of Bioequivalence Award
- 2024 Prof. Dr. James Polli,
University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, Baltimore
- 2022 Dr. Eduard Molins, Univ. Politecnica Catalunya
- 2021 Prof. Dr. Maria del Val Bermejo Sanz, Univ. Elche, Alicante
The following prizes and awards are planned or already set up:
- „Quality of Medicines Award“ (awarded together with the DPhG)
- „Pearls of Bioequivalence Award“ (awarded together with the EUFEPS Network Bioavailability and Biopharmaceutics)
- „Hans-Günter-Schäfer Award“ (awarded on the occasion of the PK / PD expert meeting)
- „Lifetime Achievement Award“ for outstanding scientists for their contributions to the optimization of the quality of medicines.
Hans-Günter-Schäfer-Award
- 2025 Alzahra Hamdan, University Uppsala, Schweden
- 2024 Yomna Nassar, Freie Univ. Berlin
- 2023 Dr. Robin Michelet, Freie Univ. Berlin
- 2022 Lukas Kovar, Univ. Saarbrücken
- 2021 Jane Knöchel, Univ. Potsdam
- 2021 Corinna Maier, Univ. Potsdam
Lifetime Achievement Award
- 2024 Prof. A. Atilla Hincal, Hacettepe Univ. Ankara
- 2023 Prof. Dr. Leslie Benet, Univ. San Francisco
- 2020 Prof. Dr. Laszlo Endrenyi, Univ. Toronto
- 2021 Prof. Dr. José Morais, Univ. Lisbon
May 19, 2025
Alzahra Hamdan received the Hans-Günter Schäfer Science Award 2025
The Hans-Günter Schäfer Science Award 2025 goes to Alzahra Hamdan. She is PhD student in her third year of studies in Pharmacometrics at the Uppsala University/Sweden and was awarded for the publication „Longitudinal Analysis of Natural History Progression of Rare and Ultra-Rare Cerebellar Ataxias Using Item Response Theory”. This paper (Clin. Pharm. Ther., doi:10.1002/cpt.3466) highlights the role of natural history studies and innovative methodologies in enhancing trial-readiness for rare diseases.
This award is sponsored by the Frankfurt Foundation Quality of Medicines (FFQM) and endowed with 1,000 €. Alzahra Hamdan received this award on May 16 at the PKPD expert meeting in Bad Dürkheim/Germany, an annual conference organized by the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für angewandte Humanpharmakologie (AGAH).
The certificate was handed over to the awardee by the AGAH president, Dr. Joachim Höchel (Bayer AG/Berlin), the meeting chair Dr. Nele Müller-Plock (Certara/Berlin) and Prof. Henning Blume, chairman of FFQM’s board.
The Foundation congratulates Alzahra Hamdan for impressive research findings and wishes her continued success in further scientific activities.
March 19, 2025
Lifetime Achievement Award for Professor Gordon Amidon
The Frankfurt Foundation Quality of Medicines will present this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award to Prof. Dr. Gordon L. Amidon of the University of Michigan, USA.
The award is in recognition of Professor Amidon’s exceptional achievements in the field of pharmaceutical sciences and his outstanding contributions to improving the quality and efficacy of medicinal products.
The award ceremony will take place during the symposium “Advances in Predictive Biopharmaceutics, Drug Product Quality and Patient Benefit”, which is jointly organized by the Johannes Gutenberg University and the Frankfurt Foundation Quality of Medicines and will take place on 11 July 2025 in Mainz (link to the conference program: https://ak-lang.pharmazie.uni-mainz.de/ffqm-jgu-symposium/
Gordon Amidon’s scientific contributions have improved the understanding of drug absorption and significantly influenced the assessment of generic equivalence through in vitro studies. He was instrumental in the development of the Biopharmaceutical Classification System (BCS) and its implementation as a BCS-based biowaiver concept. Today, the BCS is used worldwide in the development of solid oral dosage forms.
September 28, 2024
Quality of Medicines Award 2024 for Dr. Tim Menzen
At the Annual Meeting of the German Pharmaceutical Society (DPhG) in Münster, Dr. Tim Menzen received the DPhG Quality of Medicines Award 2024. The Frankfurt Foundation Quality of Medicines (FFQM) as initiator and sponsor of this award congratulates Dr. Menzen and his team for this recognition of his scientific research projects in the development of methods for determining the quality of biotechnological medicinal products. The award winner is Chief Technology Officer at Coriolis Pharma Research GmbH, Martinsried, and responsible for both, internal scientific projects and collaborations with partners from industry and academia.
(Photo: Dr. Peter Dziemba, Münster)
September 12, 2024
The Frankfurt Foundation Quality of Medicines presents Lifetime Achievement Award to Prof. Dr. A. Atilla Hincal
The Frankfurt Foundation Quality of Medicines (FFQM) has honored Prof. Dr. Atilla Hincal, Pharmaceutical Technology at Hacettepe University Ankara/Turkey, with the Lifetime Achievement Award. Prof. Hincal was awarded for his extraordinary achievements in the field of pharmaceutical technology and outstanding contributions to improve the quality and effectiveness of medicines. We congratulate the award winner on this recognition of his life’s work.
The award ceremony took place on the occasion of the 21st International Pharmaceutical Technology Symposium (IPTS) in Ankara. Professor Hincal is the founding president of this series of conferences, which takes place every second year and which he has been supporting with his expertise for more than 40 years now.
In addition to the award certificate, the prizewinner was also presented with a Gömböc, the traditional sculpture for FFQM’s Lifetime Achievement Award, by the founder and Chairman of the Board of the Foundation, Professor Henning Blume.
Professor Hincal is the fourth pharmaceutical scientist to be awarded a Gömböc by the FFQM for his life’s achievements.
April 17, 2024
Pearls of Bioequivalence Award 2024 goes to Prof. James Polli
We congratulate Professor James E. Polli, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Maryland, School of Pharmacy, who is this year’s winner of the Pearls of Bioequivalence Award. The prize is awarded jointly by the Frankfurt Foundation Quality of Medicines (FFQM) and the European Federation for Pharmaceutical Sciences (EUFEPS). The award goes to the publication of Prof. Polli:
“Lack of an Effect of Polysorbate 80 on Intestinal Drug Permeability“, Pharmaceutical Research (2022) 39:1881–1890 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11095-022-03312-zis
This prize was awarded at the Global Bioequivalence Harmonization Initiative (GBHI) conference on April 16 in Rockville/MD by the Chairman of the foundation’s Board, Professor Henning Blume.
March 17, 2024
Hans-Günter-Schäfer Award 2024
„I hope you will take this award as motivation for your future research as a scientist“. With these words, the Chairman of the Frankfurt Foundation congratulates this year’s winner of the Hans Günter Schäfer Science Award, Ms. Yomna Nassar (Freie Universität Berlin). The prize, endowed with 1,000 euros, is sponsored by the Frankfurt Foundation Quality of Medicines (FFQM).
The award was presented on 15 March on the occasion of the PKPD expert meeting in Isny, which is organized by the Association for Applied Human Pharmacology (AGAH). The past president of the AGAH, Dr. Andreas Kovar, and this year’s chairman of the meeting, Dr. Alexander Staab, present the prize to Yomna Nassar after her summary of the main results of the award-winning publication.
October 17, 2023
DPhG-FFQM Quality of Medicines Award 2023
The winners of the Quality of Medicines Award 2023 are Sophie Luise Meiser and Jonas Pielenhofer from Prof. P. Langguth’s working group at the J. Gutenberg University Mainz. Both are in an interdisciplinary research group that carries out studies in the area of “Quality-by-Design (QbD) nanotechnology / clinical pharmaceutics”.
Pielenhofer accepted the award at the DPhG annual conference in Tübingen on behalf of those involved in the project.
We congratulate the award winners on the project, which includes QbD-based product development of a new nanoparticulate emulsion gel with a poorly soluble active ingredient and ensuring the quality of the drug as well as its safe use by patients.
May 18, 2023
Congratulations, Prof. Leslie Benet - Lifetime Achievement Award presented
The Frankfurt Foundation Quality of Medicines (FFQM) Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Professor Leslie Z. Benet of the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) for his outstanding achievements in the field of pharmaceutical science and his contributions to improving the quality and efficacy of medicines awarded.
The award ceremony took place on May 15, 2023 at the end of a scientific congress in the Frankfurt Airport Conference Center. The draft of Part A of the ICH M13 Guideline on Bioequivalence of immediate release dosage forms was discussed and commented on in the „Open Forum“ initiated by the EUFEPS (European Federation for Pharmaceutical Sciences) and organized jointly with the Working Group for Pharmaceutical Process Engineering (APV).
The winner, Professor Benet, was presented with the certificate and the Gömböc, the traditional sculpture for the FFQM Lifetime Achievement Award, by the founder and Chairman of the Foundation, Professor Henning Blume.
Professor Benet is already the third scientist whose life’s work has been honored with a Gömböc by the Frankfurt Foundation Quality of Medicines.
September 29, 2022
Presentation of the "Pearls of Bioequivalence Award" at the GBHI conference in Amsterdam
The Frankfurt Foundation Quality of Medicines (FFQM) and the European Federation for Pharmaceutical Sciences (EUFEPS) honor outstanding contributions to the optimization of concept, design and evaluation of bioequivalence with the „Pearls of Bioequivalence Award“. The decision on the winners is made jointly by the two organizations on the basis of proposals from the steering committee of the EUFEPS Biopharmaceuticals and Bioavailability Network.
The award ceremony for both 2022 and 2021, which had to be postponed due to COVID restrictions, took place at the Global Bioequivalence Harmonization Initiative (GBHI) conference on September 28 in Amsterdam. We congratulate the award winners Prof. Marival Bermejo, Universitat Miquel Hernández de Elche and Dr. Eduard Molins, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya.
September 18, 2022
Dr. Cathrin Hauk received the “Quality of Medicines Award” 2022
The Frankfurt Foundation Quality of Medicines (FFQM) and the German Pharmaceutical Society (DPhG) awarded the joint »Quality of Medicines Award« at the annual Meeting of the DPhG on September 16th. This year’s award winner is Dr. Cathrin Hauk, University of Oxford/UK. With this prize her dissertation »Investigations and identification options for inferior and counterfeit medicines to improve the quality of medicines in low- and middle income Countries« (Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen) was honored.
Quote from the doctoral thesis: »Securing the quality of medicines worldwide is one of the major health policy challenges of our time and the basis for general health care, which is anchored as goal 3.8 in the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.« We congratulate Dr. Hauk, who made an important contribution to quality transparency with her investigations.
May 22, 2022
Hans Günter Schäfer Science Prize 2020 belated awarded
Since the PKPD Expert Meeting in 2020 had to be cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the presentation of the Hans Günter Schäfer Award 2020 was made up for at this year’s conference on April 29th in Saarbrücken. The two winners Corinna Maier (AbbVie) and Jane Knöchel (AstraZeneca) share the prize.
May 16, 2022
Hans-Günter-Schäfer-Science Prize 2022 awarded
Pharmacist Lukas Kovar (Boehringer Ingelheim) has been awarded the Hans Günter Schäfer Science Prize 2022. In honor of Dr. Hans Günter Schäfer this prize is awarded for the promotion of young scientists on the occasion of the PKPD expert meeting organized by the Working Group for Applied Human Pharmacology (AGAH). Since this year, the award has been supported by the Frankfurt Foundation Quality of Medicines (FFQM) as a partner of AGAH.
November 22, 2021
Professor Josè Morais honored with Lifetime Achievement Award
In a ceremony on November 13, 2021, the Frankfurt Foundation Quality of Medicines (FFQM) bestowed the “Lifetime Achievement Award” for outstanding scientific contributions to the optimization of drug quality for the first time With this award, the special merits of the award winner Professor Emeritus Dr. Josè Augusto Guimarães Morais, University of Lisbon, recognized for the development of regulatory criteria for the comparative assessment of the bioavailability of systemic drugs. „We are very pleased that we can award the prize to such an outstanding scientist,“ explains the founder and chairman of the foundation, Professor Dr. Henning Blume, who has been committed to promoting drug quality for many years.
November 22, 2021
Junior Professor Oliver Scherf-Clavel awarded with the prize for the “Promotion of Drug Quality”
As part of this year’s annual conference of the German Pharmaceutical Society (DPhG), the prize for the „Promotion of Drug Quality“ was awarded for the first time. This is a joint award by the Frankfurt Foundation Quality of Medicines (FFQM) and the DPhG.
The award winner is junior professor Dr. Oliver Scherf-Clavel, Würzburg, who was honored for his work on the contamination of valsartan and other sartans.
