Prof. Dr. Michael Hahn Receives Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize on the Transformer Architecture of LLMs

AI language models, known as large language models (LLMs), have become an integral part of our daily lives. However, they often still get logical questions completely wrong: for example, they may reproduce sequences and calculations incorrectly or spit out false figures and quotes – sometimes with serious consequences. Michael Hahn, a computational linguist in the Department of Language Science and Technology at Saarland University, has already produced promising and innovative research results addressing this problem. For this work, he has now been awarded the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize by the German Research Foundation –as one of only ten recipients nationwide.

By receiving the Hans Maier-Leibnitz Prize – only the second ever awarded to a computational linguist – Prof. Dr. Michael Hahn is sending a clear signal of the scientific excellence of computational linguistics in Saarbrücken. Back in 2000, Manfred Pinkal, a professor of computational linguistics at Saarland University, was also honored with this award. 

Currently, Dr. Michael Hahn and his interdisciplinary team at Saarland Informatics Campus are currently investigating how the neural network architecture of large AI language models works exactly and whether, given their susceptibility to errors – particularly when dealing with logical questions – other, new architectures might be more suitable. Using mathematical methods, the young researcher has already demonstrated that transformers fail at tasks where every part of the input is relevant to the output – that is, when changing a single character can alter the correct result. In addition to securing a prestigious Emmy Noether Research Group, receiving the 2026 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize represents another important step for Michael Hahn in gaining theoretical insights into the functioning, strengths, and weaknesses of LLMs over the next three years, thereby enriching the academic discourse. “Being awarded the 2026 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize is a tremendous honor not only for me personally, but for the entire chair. We have all contributed equally to this success: master’s students, PhD students, postdocs, and research assistants, as well as myself as a professor. We can be very proud of ourselves!” concludes Prof. Dr. Michael Hahn. 

The Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize award ceremony will take place on June 11, 2026, in Berlin.

We warmly congratulate Prof. Dr. Michael Hahn on this achievement!

Background on the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize:The goal of the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize, which has been awarded annually since 1977, is to support and encourage outstanding researchers who do not hold tenured professorships to continue pursuing their academic careers. The prize, endowed with 200,000 euros, is a coveted award among early-career researchers: in 2026, 156 researchers from all disciplines were nominated. The prize is named after the physicist and former president of the German Research Foundation, Heinz Maier-Leibnitz.

The official press release from Saarland University is available here.