Marie Heim-Vögtlin prize for outstanding young women researchers

Anna Feller wins the 2025 MHV Prize.

If you want to understand how biodiversity is created and maintained, you also need to know why closely related species do not reproduce with each other. Precisely this question is what evolutionary biologist Anna Feller researched during her SNSF Postdoc.Mobility fellowship at Harvard University

In order to better understand the barriers between species, she combined crossbreeding experiments in the greenhouse with genetic analyses of plants growing in the wild. This approach enabled her to prove that there are species that have exchanged genetically despite strong barriers. “Such unexpected results are scientifically interesting because they indicate that there are aspects that we do not yet understand,” says Feller.

About the Marie Heim-Vögtlin Prize

The SNSF awards the Marie Heim-Vögtlin (MHV) Prize each year to an outstanding woman researcher. Prizewinners are inspiring role models whose careers progressed significantly thanks to a grant from the SNSF. The prize is worth 25,000 Swiss francs. For ten years, the prize was awarded to former recipients of the MHV funding scheme. Now that this scheme has been discontinued, the prize is being awarded to former female grantees of the MHV, Doc.CH, Postdoc.Mobility, Ambizione and PRIMA funding schemes.

Named after a pioneering woman

The MHV Prize was named after Marie Heim-Vögtlin, who became the first Swiss woman to study medicine when she was admitted to the University of Zurich’s medical faculty in 1868. On completing her studies, she opened a gynaecological practice, where she continued practising after giving birth to two children. She is regarded as one of the pioneers in the struggle to give women access to higher education.