30th Max Grünebaum Prize Ceremony: Outstanding young talent from the worlds of science and the arts honoured

The anniversary coincided with a special commemorative year: 6 November marked the 175th anniversary of the birth of Max Grünebaum (1851–1925), an honorary citizen of Cottbus and cloth manufacturer. BTU president Prof. Dr Gesine Grande, chairperson of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees, Artistic Director Berthold Schneider and Lord Mayor Tobias Schick opened the ceremony. 

“The Max Grünebaum Prize epitomises what defines our city and makes it strong: a commitment to science and culture, the promotion of outstanding talent, and the conviction that the future is shaped where people can develop their ideas and abilities. The fact that this special commitment by the Grünebaum family has been upheld for decades is a great asset and an honour for Cottbus/Chóśebuz and the entire region. I warmly congratulate the prize-winners on this well-deserved honour,” said Tobias Schick, Lord Mayor of the City of Cottbus/Chóśebuz.

The following four outstanding young researchers were honoured: 

• The BTU’s Max Grünebaum Prize, worth 5,000 euros: Computer Science researcher Dr.-Ing. Asya Mitseva received the prize for her doctoral thesis on online privacy, which was awarded the distinction ‘summa cum laude’.
• The State Theatre’s Max Grünebaum Prize, worth 5,000 euros: The prize was awarded to the dancer Alyosa Forlini. Since the 2019/20 season, he has impressed in numerous leading roles and has played a key role in shaping the ballet company.
• Ernst Frank Encouragement Prize, worth 3,500 euros: The prize went to BTU biotechnology student Klara Richter and will fund her research stay at the Institute of Cancer Research in London.
• Karl Newman Award, worth 3,500 euros: Leonora Mense, dramaturg for musical theatre, ballet and concerts at the Staatstheater Cottbus, received the award to fund a study trip to London.

In addition to these individual awards, the foundation provides annual funding of 10,000 euros for a ‘Research-Based Theatre’ project week. This year, in keeping with the theme of ‘energy’, Class 10a from the Theodor-Fontane-Schule explored not only the Staatstheater’s rehearsal stages but also the LEAG opencast mine in Welzow-Süd and the DLR Institute for Low-Carbon Industrial Processes.
“With this educational project, we are building precisely the bridge that was close to Max Grünebaum’s heart throughout his life: we are bringing young people together with science and the arts, because when pupils stand on the rehearsal stage whilst also exploring research institutions in our region, they experience creative work and scientific research first-hand,” said Prof. Dr Gesine Grande, president of the BTU and chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the Max Grünebaum Foundation.
For the first time, schools in Cottbus were able to submit applications to take part in the upcoming project weeks. The winners were drawn live at the awards ceremony. 

About the Max Grünebaum Foundation

The Max Grünebaum Foundation commemorates the Cottbus cloth manufacturer and honorary citizen Max Grünebaum (1851–1925). His family was expropriated under the Nazi regime and expelled from Germany. Following German reunification, his descendants used the compensation they received to establish the foundation – as a lasting symbol of reconciliation. Since 1997, it has annually recognised outstanding achievements by artists at the Cottbus State Theatre and, since 2020, by academics at the BTU.

The BTU prize winners

Greater privacy online: Dr.-Ing. Asya Mitseva (Max Grünebaum Prize)
The Computer Science researcher is being honoured for her doctoral thesis, ‘State of Affairs in Online User Privacy’, which was awarded the distinction ‘summa cum laude’. She investigates how effectively anonymisation services such as the Tor network actually protect people from surveillance. Whilst content and identity remain hidden, the number, direction and timing of data packets do not, and conclusions can be drawn from this about browsing behaviour.
Mitseva has developed new analytical methods that accurately identify every visit to more than half of the websites examined, as well as a cost-effective, purely user-side defence mechanism that distributes data traffic across
multiple Tor paths. The results are already being applied to protect smart meter data at the BTU’s Energy Innovation Centre and patient data in 5G campus networks (medCS.5). They have been published at leading conferences including ACM CCS 2020 and USENIX Security 2024. The three examiners, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Andriy Panchenko (BTU), Prof. Dr. Florian Tschorsch (TU Dresden) and Prof. Dr. Thomas Engel (Université du Luxembourg), each rated the work as ‘very good’. Since January 2026, Mitseva has been leading the Young Investigator Group ‘CO-SYS – Control Systems and Cyber Security Lab’.

Research and commitment: Klara Richter (Ernst Frank Award)
Klara Richter has been studying biotechnology at the BTU since October 2023 and has impressed with her academic achievements and her interest in Cell Biology. During her practical semester, she conducted research in Prof. Dr Julia von Maltzahn’s research group (Stem Cell Biology of Ageing) on signalling pathways involved in the differentiation of muscle cells. Prior to this, whilst working as a student (research) assistant in Technical Microbiology, she investigated how food waste could be utilised as a basis for prawn feed with the help of a fungus.
She is writing her bachelor’s thesis at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, in the research group led by Prof. Janet Shipley, a leading figure in the field of rhabdomyosarcoma research, a highly malignant soft tissue tumour. There, she hopes to learn about modern methods such as lineage tracing in combination with single-cell RNA sequencing. The Ernst Frank Award is making this stay possible. In addition, she is active on the Student Representative Council and the Student Council at the Senftenberg campus, has served on an appointments committee and has helped, amongst other things, to organise the BTU’s Schneeflockenball (2025 and 2026), the student Christmas market and the first-year students’ orientation week. 

The award winners at the Staatstheater Cottbus

Alyosa Forlini (Max Grünebaum Prize)
The dancer Alyosa Forlini has been a member of the ballet ensemble at the Cottbus State Theatre since the 2019/20 season and has shone in numerous leading roles, including works by world-renowned choreographers. Born in Italy, he began his training at the ballet school of the Accademia Teatro alla Scala and continued it at the State Ballet School in Berlin. From the 2015/16 season, he was a member of the ballet company at the Mecklenburg State Theatre before moving to Cottbus in 2019. Here, Alyosa Forlini was able to develop his extraordinary and unique dance language with hypnotic power. His performances always leave a lasting impression,
whether he is paying a powerful dance tribute to Freddie Mercury or pulling the strings as the mysterious ballet master in Giorgio Madia’s version of *The Nutcracker*. In “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Martin Chaix, he and Stefan Kulhawec impressively brought the tragedy of a love thwarted to life on stage in the pas de deux. Choreographer Douglas Lee found in Alyosa Forlini the ideal master of ceremonies for his creation ‘Fade outs’, in which the dancer forms the charismatic centrepiece. He is currently dancing in *Cinderella*, *Da Vinci* and *Im Verborgenen*, and appears on stage as Tybalt in the four-art tragedy *Romeo and Juliet*.
As a long-standing member of the ballet board, Alyosa Forlini has played a key role in shaping the ensemble.
The award of the 2026 Max Grünebaum Prize is granted with distinction to honour the achievements of an artist who has set new standards on the Cottbus stage in recent years and whose expressiveness has left an indelible mark on the hearts and memories of the audience.

Leonora Mense (Karl Newman Encouragement Prize)

Leonora Mense, 
a dramaturg originally from Münster, completed her Bachelor’s degree in German Studies and Theatre Studies, specialising in musicology, at the Ruhr University Bochum with top marks. She subsequently completed a Master’s degree in Critical Dance Studies at the Free University of Berlin in 2022. Since the 2023/24 season, she has been giving introductory talks on productions by the Staatsballett Berlin.
At the start of the 2025/26 season, she joined the Staatstheater Cottbus as a dramaturg for music theatre, ballet and concerts. Leonora Mense has, in a very short space of time, familiarised herself with both the demanding repertoire of Hasko Weber’s interim season and the structure of the theatre.
Communicative in all directions, a good mediator, approachable and with a keen eye and mind, she took on the role of dramaturg for the musical theatre productions ‘AscheMOND oder The Fairy Queen’ by Helmut Oehring, directed
by Sebastian Baumgarten, and Verdi’s ‘Nabucco’ directed by Armin Petras, and has supported the intensive rehearsal processes. In doing so, she has succeeded in quickly becoming an integral part of each directing team. Even in her very first project, the ballet ‘Cinderella’, choreographed by Xenia Wiest, she joined the team as an equal. This season, as a dramaturg, she is the supervisor for the four-discipline production “Romeo and Juliet” and the world premiere of the ballet “Dracula Dracula Dracula”.
She knows how to productively integrate her openness to new perspectives and ideas into her work. As a keen observer capable of drawing clear conclusions, she always strikes the ‘right note’ in her communication,
whether with colleagues or with the audience.
The award honours a young theatre maker who understands the human element as theatre’s most sustainable resource and knows how to incorporate it into her work.