Dr. Andrea Schneider, recently appointed as an advisor to the office of Germany’s Federal Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is the winner of the 2007 Novak Award and its associated $10,000 prize.

Dr. Schneider studied economics at the Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, where she taught and worked for the Chair for Economic Policy in Nuremberg, Germany. Her dissertation received both the Hermann-Gutmann-Foundation Award and the Wolfgang-Ritter-Award. She went on to work as director of the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation’s economic policy group.

At the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation, she advised on topics like labor market, health care, welfare reform, and the significance of human dignity in politics. She is currently an advisor on economic and political reform in the Federal Chancellor’s Staff for Policy Planning.

Dr. Schneider has published and taught on many topics, including the social market economy, welfare reform, and social ethics. Additionally, she is a member of the Central Committee of German Catholics (Zentralkomitee der deutschen Katholiken), the preeminent organization for lay Catholics in Germany.

Named after distinguished American theologian and social philosopher Michael Novak, the Novak Award rewards new outstanding research by scholars early in their academic careers who demonstrate outstanding intellectual merit in advancing the understanding of theology’s connection to human dignity, the importance of limited government, religious liberty, and economic freedom. Recipients of the Novak Award make a formal presentation on such questions at an annual public forum known as the Calihan Lecture. This year’s lecture will be held in Rome this spring.

The Novak award forms part of a range of scholarships, travel grants, and awards available from the Acton Institute that support future religious and intellectual leaders who wish to study the essential relationship between theology, the free market, economic liberty, and the importance of the rule of law. Details of these scholarships may be found at www.acton.org/programs/students.