Three researchers have been awarded the prestigious PRIMA funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation at Unifr. The PRIMA programme is aimed at woman researchers with high potential to become professors. Since its creation in 2018, the results at Unifr have been far above the Swiss average. This year, 18 grants have been awarded throughout Switzerland for 132 applications - a success rate of 14% - while Unifr has obtained 3 grants for 6 applications.

Stéphanie Durrleman (right on the picture), currently at the University of Geneva, will join the Laboratory for Cognitive and Neurological Science of the Section of Medicine. She studies the interaction between autism and multilingualism. For Stéphanie Durrleman, mastering several languages can be beneficial for children with autism. In Fribourg she will test this hypothesis.

Jovana Milic (left on the picture), who joined the Adolphe Merkle Institute at Unifr this year, is a chemist and focuses on solar energy. She is working on the development of new solar panels that would be both more robust and cheaper, by combining mineral and organic molecules in their composition. Jovana Milic has just won a "Green Talents" award for young researchers with great potential in sustainable development.

Finally, Nadine Amsler, currently at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Berlin, will join the History Department.  She will study the topic of the raising of children at the courts of the ruling dynasties during the seenteenth and eighteenth centuries, through an impressive variety of cases including the Chinese, Ottoman and Russian empires. Nadine Amsler will examine aspects often neglected by recent historians, such as early childhood and early education.