Prof. Péter Kempler, recipient of the Jühling Prize, and Congress President as well as DDZ Director Prof. Michael Roden.
At this year’s congress of the Central European Diabetes Association (CEDA) in Düsseldorf, two awards from the Anna Wunderlich and Ernst Jühling Foundation were presented: the Jühling Prize – awarded for the very first time – went to the CEDA President and neuropathy expert Prof. Dr. Péter Kempler from Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary. The Jühling Award was presented to Dr. Sevgican Yilmaz from the German Diabetes Centre (DDZ) and Nika Atanelov from Düsseldorf University Hospital (UKD). The CEDA Congress is one of the most important platforms for scientific exchange in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.
The Anna Wunderlich and Ernst Jühling Foundation for the Promotion of Diabetes Research at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) has added a new award to its honours programme this year. The Jühling Prize will be presented annually to researchers who have made outstanding contributions to diabetology and metabolic research in collaboration with HHU and the DDZ. “The Jühling Prize focuses on a lifetime’s scientific work, which is an important extension of the Jühling Foundation’s philosophy of support,” emphasises Prof. Michael Roden, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Anna Wunderlich and Ernst Jühling Foundation, Scientific Director and Spokesman for the Board of the DDZ, and Director of the Department of Endocrinology and Diabetology at Düsseldorf University Hospital.
The first recipient of the Jühling Prize is Péter Kempler, professor in the Department of Internal Medicine and Oncology at Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary, who is receiving the Jühling Prize for his outstanding research in the field of diabetic neuropathy. For several decades, Kempler’s research has focused on diabetic neuropathy, nerve damage that is a common complication of diabetes, and he is regarded as one of the world’s leading experts in this field. From 2022 until this year’s CEDA Congress, Kempler served as President of CEDA; from 2016 to 2021, he was President of the Hungarian Diabetes Society and is currently its Vice-President. He has been a member of the Diabetic Neuropathy Study Group (NEURodiab) since 1992 and served as President between 2018 and 2021. He also was a member of the Toronto Consensus Group, which developed diagnostic and treatment criteria for neuropathy that remain valid to this day. Over the past 20 years, Kempler has received numerous scientific honours, including the Hetényi Géza Award and the Hungarian state Batthyány-Strattmann László Award.
The new Jühling Prize from the Anna Wunderlich and Ernst Jühling Foundation.
“For more than four decades, Péter Kempler has devoted himself to diabetic neuropathy, thereby improving the lives of countless people with diabetes and neuropathy. Among other things, he demonstrated the link between cardiovascular risk factors and autonomic neuropathy and showed that autonomic and sensory neuropathy each independently increase the risk of death,” emphasises Prof. Roden, who chaired CEDA 2026 as Congress President. During the event, Prof. Kempler held the Jühling Lecture “A Short Journey to No Man’s Land”, looking back on four decades of neuropathy research.
CEDA 2026 offered participants a total of 16 scientific sessions on topics of high clinical significance, including one joint symposium each with the German Centre for Diabetes Research (DZD) and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD). Four industry symposia rounded off the programme. The congress’s opening ceremony featured welcoming addresses from the worlds of politics, local community and academia: Ina Brandes, Minister for Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, addressed the participants via video. Present in person were Miriam Koch, Deputy Mayor for Culture, Integration and Health of the state capital and Prof. Anja Steinbeck, Rector of HHU.
Péter Kempler, President of CEDA (2022–2026), emphasises the particular value of the congress format: “CEDA facilitates cross-border exchange on diabetes care, thereby creating something that is essential to medicine: a space where clinical practice and research truly come together. The German Diabetes Centre in Düsseldorf was the ideal host for this.”
About the Anna Wunderlich and Ernst Jühling Foundation
The Anna Wunderlich and Ernst Jühling Foundation supports diabetes research at the Faculty of Medicine of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and the DDZ. The foundation was established in accordance with the last will and testament of Dr. rer. nat. Liselotte Jühling (1904–1978); HHU has been the trustee since 2019. Since 2021, the Foundation has been presenting the Jühling Award for outstanding scientific achievements in research into diabetes mellitus and its complications. In 2026, the Jühling Prize was awarded for the first time in recognition of outstanding contributions to diabetology.