Biologist Prof. Dr. Tobias Ackels (40) from the University of Bonn will be awarded the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Early Career Award 2025, the Scientific Council of the Paul Ehrlich Foundation announced today. The prizewinner has discovered that mammals smell faster than they breathe. He has shown that their nerve cells can derive new information from a dynamic scent cloud up to 40 times per second. Ackels has thus disproved the previously held assumption that the sense of smell is slow. At the same time, his research has opened a new door to understanding brain function as a whole, and he is exploring ways of using this fundamental mechanism for the early diagnosis of dementia.