TWINCORE Symposium 2017

TWINCORE Symposium 2017

Externe Sprecher

Ass.-Prof. Dr. Ulf Beier Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Prof. Dr. Dirk Brockmann Robert Koch - Institut & Institut für Theoretische Biologie, Humboldt Universität Berlin
Prof. Dr. Jan Buer Institut für Medizinische Mikrobiologie, Universitätsklinikum Essen
Prof. Dr. Teunis Geijtenbeek Department of Experimental Immunology, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam
Prof. Dr. André Gessner Institut für Medizinische Mikrobiologie und Hygiene, Universitätsklinikum Regensburg
Prof. Dr. Mathias Heikenwälder Abteilung Chronische Entzündungen und Krebs, Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, Heidelberg
Dr. Barbara Rehermann Immunology Section, Liver Diseases Branch, National Institutes of Health, USA
Prof. Dr. Hansjörg Schild Institut für Immunologie, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Dr. Till Strowig Mikrobielle Immunregulation, Helmholtz Zentrum für Infektionsforschung, Braunschweig

Ass.-Prof. Ulf Beier

Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Ulf Beier graduated from medical school at the Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany, where he also completed a doctoral degree (Dr. med.) studying head and neck cancer biology. After emigrating to the United States in 2005, he completed a residency in Pediatrics at UIC, Chicago, IL, and a Pediatric Nephrology Fellowship at CHOP, Philadelphia, PA. He stayed at CHOP after the fellowship and became faculty at the University of Pennsylvania in 2012. Throughout his clinical training in nephrology, Ulf Beier became very interested in transplant immunology, and in particular the field of immunometabolism. His laboratory studies the role of lactate, pyruvate and other metabolites in regulating immune responses.

Professor Dirk Brockmann

Institute for Biology at Humboldt University of Berlin and the Robert Koch Institute, Berlin

Prof. Dirk Brockmann studied physics and mathematics at Duke University and the University of Göttingen where he received his degree in theoretical physics in 1995 and his PhD in 2003. After postdoctoral positions at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen he became Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics at Northwestern University in 2008. In 2013 he returned to Germany where he became Professor at the Institute for Biology at Humboldt University of Berlin. Brockmann worked on a variety of topics ranging from computational neuroscience, anomalous diffusion, Levy flights, human mobility, computational epidemiology, and complex networks.
Brockmann pioneered the scientific use of mass data collected in online games in a 2006 study in which he and his colleagues analyzed the geographic circulation of millions of dollar-bills registered at the online bill tracking website "Where's George?" This study lead to the discovery of universal scaling laws in human mobility, the forecast of spreading routes of the 2009 flu pandemic in the United States and effective geographic borders in the United States. Brockmann also pioneered the development of computational models and forecast systems for the global spread of epidemics based on global air-transportation. In a 2013 study Brockmann and his colleague Dirk Helbing showed that complex global contagion phenomena can be mapped onto simple propagating wave patterns using the theoretical concept of effective distance. This method was employed for import risk estimates during the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa in 2014.
Brockmann's research has been featured in an episode of the American crime drama television series Numbers.

Professor Jan Buer

Institut für Medizinische Mikrobiologie, Universitätsklinikum Essen

Jan Buer beschäftigt sich wissenschaftlich mit Toleranzinduktion im Tiermodell und bei Patienten mit Autoimmun, Tumor- und Infektionserkrankungen.
Seine Doktorarbeit führte ihn nach New York an das renommierte Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, wo er sich bei Prof. Joseph R. Bertino mit der molekularen Diagnostik von Leukämien und Lymphomen beschäftigt hat.
Nach dem Studium der Humanmedizin in Hannover hat Jan Buer als Stipendiat der DFG bei Prof. Harald von Boehmer am Kinderkrankenhaus Hôpital Necker in Paris als „Postdoc“ geforscht. 1998 wurde er als Leiter einer BMBF Nachwuchsforschergruppe an die Gesellschaft für Biotechnologische Forschung (GBF) nach Braunschweig berufen, wo er sich mit mukosaler Immunität und Immunregulation pathogen-spezifischer Immunität beschäftigt hat.
Seine klinisch-mikrobiologische Ausbildung hat Jan Buer bei Prof. Dieter Bitter-Suermann am Institut für Medizinische Mikrobiologie und Krankenhaushygiene der Medizinischen Hochschule Hannover (MHH) erhalten. 2003 wurde Jan Buer als erster gemeinsamer Professor (C3) von der MHH und der GBF berufen. Jan Buer war neben seiner wissenschaftlichen Tätigkeit bis Juni 2007 als Oberarzt bei Prof. Sebastian Suerbaum am Institut für Medizinische Mikrobiologie und Krankenhaushygiene der MHH tätig. 2006 wurde Jan Buer der Roche Applied Science Innovationspreis „Imagining the Future“ verliehen.
Seit 15. Juni 2007 lehrt und forscht Jan Buer als W3 Professor und Direktor des Instituts für Medizinische Mikrobiologie am Universitätsklinikum Essen. Seine klinischen Schwerpunkte sind komplexe Infektionen bei Immunsuppression im Rahmen der Transplantationsmedizin, Molekulare Diagnostik, Borreliose & Lues sowie tumor-assoziierte Infektionserkrankungen. Jan Buer hat über 200 Originalarbeiten und Übersichtsarbeiten in internationalen Fachzeitschriften veröffentlicht und ist als Fachgutachter für nationale und internationale Stiftungen aktiv. Seit 2011 ist Jan Buer Schriftführer der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Hygiene und Mikrobiologie (DGHM).

Professor Teunis Geijtenbeek

Department of Experimental Immunology, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam

Teunis Geijtenbeek was born in 1969 in Scherpenzeel, the Netherlands, and graduated in Chemistry in 1992 at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands. In 1996 he obtained his PhD in Chemistry at the same university. He performed his postdoctoral research in Immunology at the St Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, with Prof. Y. van Kooyk / Prof. C. Figdor, and at the New York University, USA, with Prof. D. Littman. During his postdoctoral research he became interested in host-pathogen interactions and in particular how HIV-1 subverts the function of dendritic cells. He became full professor in 2010 at the University of Amsterdam, Academic Medical Center and he is now the head of the department of Experimental Immunology at the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His group studies the function of pattern recognition receptor on human dendritic cells in viral infections and adaptive immunity to pathogens.

Professor André Gessner

Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, Universitätsklinikum Regensburg

Prof. Dr. Dr. André Gessner studied Medicine and Molecular Biology at the University of Hamburg. He received his MD in infection immunology and his PhD in molecular virology. After 5 years of basic research at the Heinrich-Pette –Institute in Hamburg he established his research group at the University of Erlangen where he also completed his training and examination as physician for medical microbiology and infectious disease epidemiologist. In 2001 he joined the laboratory of Prof. Locksley at the University of San Francisco (UCSF), USA. For many years he was the spokesman of the German study group of infection immunology. His scientific work is focussed on molecular infection immunology and infectious diseases. Prof. Gessner is certified antibiotic stewardship expert and reviewer for several international Journals and scientific societies, including the German research society (DFG) and the German Ministry of  Education and Science (BMBF). Between 2008 and 2010 he got four calls on university chairs for Medical Microbiology. Since 2010 he is professor and director of the Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene at the University of Regensburg, where 150 employees are working on all aspects of infectious diseases. Recently, Prof. Gessner was elected research dean of the medical faculty in Regensburg.

Professor Mathias Heikenwälder

Abteilung Chronische Entzündungen und Krebs, Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, Heidelberg

Prof. Heikenwälder und seine Gruppe untersuchen molekulare und zelluläre Mechanismen, die chronische Entzündung, Gewebeschaden, Krebs und Metastasierung verursachen. Dabei versucht er, in enger Zusammenarbeit mit Kliniken neue Modelle und Therapieansätze zu entwickeln. Prof. Heikenwälder studierte Mikrobiologie und Molekularbiologie in Wien. Nach einem zweijährigen Forschungsaufenthalt am Max-Delbrück-Zentrum für Medizin in Berlin schloss er sein Studium 1999 mit höchster Auszeichnung ab. Danach begann er seine Doktorarbeit am Institut für Neuropathologie in Zürich. 2004 promovierte er am Institut für Neuropathologie (Universität Zürich) auf dem Gebiet der Prionenforschung. Nach seiner Habilitation an der medizinischen Fakultät am Universitätsspital Zürich wurde er 2007 Max-Cloëtta-Professor und Gruppenleiter mit dem Forschungsschwerpunkt »Entzündung und Krebs«. Im Jahre 2010 wurde er Nachwuchsgruppenleiter am Institut für Virologie am Helmholtz Zentrum München und Professor an der Technischen Universität München. Seit Mitte 2015 ist Prof. Heikenwälder als Leiter der Abteilung F180 „Chronische Entzündungen und Krebs" am Deutschen Krebsforschungszentrum in Heidelberg tätig.

Dr. Barbara Rehermann

Immunology Section, Liver Diseases Branch in the intramural research program of NIDDK, NIH

Dr. Barbara Rehermann is Chief of the Immunology Section, Liver Diseases Branch in the intramural research program of NIDDK, NIH in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. Dr. Rehermann’s research career started in Hannover, Germany, where she received an M.D. degree and the Venia legendi for Immunology from the Medizinische Hochschule Hannover. In addition to a clinical residency and fellowship in the Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endocrinology at the same university, she pursued a research year at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, NY and postdoctoral research training at The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA . She directed her own laboratory as an independently funded investigator at tge Medizinische Hochschule Hannover before moving to the National Institutes of Health. Her research interests are the immunobiology and pathogenesis of viral infections, in particular those of the liver. She studies the role of innate and adaptive immune responses in viral clearance and disease pathogenesis using multidisciplinary approaches that include research with biomedical specimens from infected patients, animal models and in vitro models of virus-host cell interaction. Her work was honored with national and international awards such as the Pettenkofer Research Award,,  the Loeffler-Frosch Award of the German Society for Virology and the NIH Bench-to-Bedside and the NIH Director’s Innovation Awards. Dr. Rehermann has served as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Immunology and is currently Consulting Editor for the Journal of Clinical Investigation and on the editorial board of the journals Gastroenterology, Hepatology, Journal of Infectious Diseases and Journal of Hepatology. She is an ad hoc reviewer for the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Journal of Experimental Medicine, Nature Medicine, Science, Immunity and others and has served as an ad hoc reviewer on NIH study sections and on national and international research committees. Dr. Rehermann is a member of the ASCI, AAP, AASLD, AAI and ASM in the US, and the DGfI and DfV in Germany.  She has trained more than 45 postdoctoral fellows and students many of whom continued academic careers as physician scientists in the US, Germany, Italy, South Korea and Japan.

Professor Hansjörg Schild

Institut für Immunologie, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

2003 - present: Director, Institute for Immunology at the University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
2002: Appointment as Full Professor of Immunology at the University of Marburg (declined)
1996 - 2003: Group leader, Institute for Cell Biology, Dept. of Immunology, University of Tübingen, Germany
1993 - 1996: Group leader, German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany
1990 - 1993: Postdoc, Stanford University Medical School (Dr. Mark Davis), Stanford, USA
1990 - 1993: Postdoc, Max-Planck-Institute for Biology, Tübingen, Germany

Dr. Till Strowig

Nachwuchsforschergruppe Mikrobielle Immunregulation, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Infektionsforschung, Braunschweig

Till Strowig studierte Medizinische Biotechnologie an der Technischen Universität Berlin. Im Anschluss an seine Diplomarbeit an der „Rockefeller University“ in New York, USA, erhielt er ein Stipendium der Boehringer Ingelheim Stiftung, um dort auch die Arbeiten zu seiner Doktorarbeit durchzuführen.
Nach der Promotion setzte er seine wissenschaftliche Ausbildung im Labor von Richard Flavell an der „Yale University“ fort – unterstützt von einem Stipendium der Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Seit Juni 2013 leitet Till Strowig die Nachwuchsforschergruppe „Mikrobielle Immunregulation“ am HZI.