Since 2006, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) annually confers the "Bernstein Award for Computational Neuroscience" to excellent junior scientists. The award is announced internationally  and is equipped with up to 1.25 Mio Euros over five years.

Funding is provided for research projects which have been designed by young, German or foreign Postdocs and which will be conducted at a German research institution. By realizing research projects which they have designed and will supervise themselves and by establishing their own junior research group, the young project leaders are to be given an opportunity to conduct independent research. The group funded by the “Bernstein Award” will become an integral part of the National Network for Computational Neuroscience.

Awardees: Prof. Dr. Matthias Bethge ( 2006) Dr. Jan Benda (2007) Dr. Susanne Schreiber (2008) Dr. Jan Gläscher (2009) Dr. Udo Ernst (2010) Dr. Henning Sprekeler (2011)