
Besedovsky
Luciana Besedovsky is a professor at the University of Munich, where she investigates the role of sleep for the immune system in humans. She is one of only few scientists worldwide focusing on the investigation of this relatively young field of research. She received her PhD at the University of Tübingen, Germany. From 2017 – 2018, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA, after which she returned to Tübingen to lead the group “Sleep and Immunology”. In 2021, she took up a professorship at the University of Munich, where she is continuing her research in this field, gives lectures and seminars for medical students, and engages in science communication, among other things.

Bittner
Stefan Bittner holds an endowed full professorship for neuroimmunology (Hermann and Lilly Schilling Foundation for Medical Research) and leads the Department for Translational Neurology at the University Hospital in Mainz. The main research interests of his group is the understanding of (patho-)physiological mechanisms underlying the crosstalk between the immune and central nervous system. The complex and dynamic interactions between immune, glial and neuronal networks are relevant for brain function both in homeostasis and especially in autoimmune diseases of the CNS such as multiple sclerosis. Using broad technical expertise ranging from molecular biological, immunological and electrophysiological methods to animal experiments in disease models and blood and tissue samples from patients with neuroimmunological disorders, his group is specifically interested in novel pathways of immune-mediated neurodegeneration. Further, he explores emerging biomarkers indicating disease activitiy and neurodegenerative processes such as neurofilament light chains as a marker of axonal damage in patients. He has published more than 200 papers, among others in Nature Medicine, Nature Neuroscience, Journal of Clinical Investigation and Journal of Experimental Medicine.

Böttcher

Brenner
Dirk Brenner studied at the Universities of Bonn and Witten/Herdecke and received training at Stanford and Harvard. He completed his PhD with Dr. Peter Krammer at DKFZ in Heidelberg, Germany and pursued postdoctoral training with Dr. Tak Mak in Toronto, Canada. Currently, he is Deputy Director of the Department of Infection & Immunity at the Luxembourg Institute of Health and a Professor of Immunology at the University of Luxembourg. His lab investigates metabolic regulation in the immune system, particularly in inflammation and cancer. Key research areas include redox control and reactive oxygen species, examining their impact on immune cell function and metabolism.

Cerwenka
Prof. Dr. Adelheid Cerwenka studied pharmacy in Vienna, Austria followed by a PhD in Immunology. In 1998, she joined the laboratory of Prof. Lewis Lanier as post-doctoral fellow at DNAX and UCSF, San Francisco, USA. After 2 years as group leader at Novartis, Austria, she was recruited as junior group leader to the German Cancer Research Center, DKFZ, in Heidelberg, Germany. Since 2017 she is full professor and chair of Immunobiochemistry at Heidelberg University, Medical Faculty Mannheim, where she serves as Vice Dean of Research and as elected director of the Mannheim Institute for Innate Immunoscience (MI3). She is the speaker of the DFG-funded Research Training Group GRK2727/1 “Incheck” bringing together 13 projects from the Medical Faculties Mannheim and Heidelberg and DKFZ. She is elected member of the steering committee of the DGfI and the German Cancer Aid, and is past president of the “Society of Natural Immunity”, SNI. She was awarded several awards including the “Georges-Köhler-Preis” in 2007, of which she serves as the “prize patron” since 2023. She has published more than 120 publications, serves as reviewer for highly esteemed journals and her research is funded by national, international research foundations and industry.
The research in the Cerwenka-lab focusses on Natural Killer (NK) cell biology in cancer and inflammation with a focus on harnessing NK receptors and desiphering the impact of tissue/tumor microenvironments. Her team works in both mouse models and human cells (eg NK/organoid co-culture). Her work has contributed to the discovery and functional evaluation of NK cell activating receptors including NKG2D and NKp30 and their ligands (Cerwenka et al. Immunity 2000, Cerwenka et al PNAS, 2001, Fiegler et al, Blood, 2013, Schlecker et al. Can. Res. 2014). Moreover, her research elucidated the anti-tumor activity of cytokine-induced memory cells that helped the design of ongoing clinical trials (Ni et al. JEM, 2012, Rölle et al, JCI, 2014). More recently, her team focusses on desiphering microenvironmental cues that shape NK cell reactivity such as the hypoxic microenvironment in the tumor tissue (Ni et al. Immunity, 2020). This study identified the transcrption factor Hypoxia Inducible Factor 1a (HIF-1a) as checkpoint for NK cell anti-tumor reactivity. Finally, her lab is interested in factors driving tumor resistance to NK cell attack and delineated combinatoral approaches for checkpoint inhibitors to further unleash NK cell anti-cancer function (Hofman et al, JITC, 2024). Together, the research of the Cerwenka-lab contributes novel insights into NK cell reactivity and dysfunction in cancer with the potential for harnessing NK cells for clinical translation to cancer patients.

Chavakis
T. Chavakis is a clinician scientist and specialist in Internal Medicine and Laboratory Medicine. He is currently (since 2017) Director of the Institute for Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, University Hospital Dresden, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany. His research focuses on innate immunity and immunometabolism.
Previous academic positions
2005-2010: Tenure-Track Principal Investigator, Head Inflammation Biology Section, Experimental Immunology Branch, NCI, NIH, Bethesda, USA
2010-2014: Assoc. Prof. in Internal Medicine, Medical Clinic III, University Hospital Dresden, TU Dresden
2014-2017: Prof. and Head of Clinical Pathobiochemistry at the Institute for Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, University Hospital Dresden, TU Dresden.
Honors:
– 3x ERC grant (Starting 2011-2016; Consolidator 2017-2022; Advanced 2023-2028)
– Elected to the German National Academy of Sciences 2023
-Highly cited researcher (2022, 2023, 2024)

Gasteiger

Grieshaber-Bouyer
Professor Grieshaber-Bouyer studied medicine and business administration. He received his clinical training in medicine, rheumatology, and immunology at the Universities of Heidelberg and Zurich, at Duke University School of Medicine, and at Harvard Medical School. His immunological research focuses on neutrophils, inflammatory arthritis, and bioinformatics. After postdoctoral training with the Boston-based ImmGen Consortium, he then established a DFG-funded research group at Heidelberg University as clinician scientist, focusing on neutrophil heterogeneity in rheumatic disease.
He was then appointed Professor of Clinical Systems Immunology at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg. In his clinical role he heads the clinical trial unit and focuses on the interdisciplinary care of patients with rheumatic and immune-mediated diseases, particularly in the context of emerging immunotherapies such as T cell engagers and CAR T cell therapies. His research group investigates the mechanisms driving immune cell heterogeneity in tissues and inflammatory conditions and develops new bioinformatics analysis tools for high dimensional data.

Hauck
Fabian Hauck, MD, PhD, is Professor of Pediatric Immunology and Hematology/Oncology at the Dr. von Hauner Children’s Hospital of the Ludwig-Maximilans-Universität in Munich, Germany. He graduated as a medical doctor (MD) in the laboratory of Prof. Edgar Serfling in the Institute of Pathology at the University of Würzburg. Subsequently he graduated as a doctor of immunology (PhD) in the Laboratory of Prof. Alain Fischer at the Sorbonne University Paris.
Dr. Hauck is heading the Division of Pediatric Immunology and Rheumatology including the Laboratory of Immunological Diagnostics at the Dr. von Hauner Children’s Hospital and the Research Group on Immune Signaling at the Comprehensive Childhood Research Center Munich. With more than 600 patients this is one of the biggest pediatric immunology units in Germany and Europe. Dr. Hauck’s scientific focus is on identifying the etiology and pathophysiology of inborn errors of immunity (IEI) and during the last eight years he has described or was involved in the description of numerous IEI such as GNAI2 gain-of-function (GOF), UNC93B1 haploinsufficiency (HI), IKZF1 GOF, OAS1 GOF, NBAS1 loss-of-function (LOF), CD137 LOF, CASP8 LOF, IKZF1 dominant-negative (DN), TGFB1 LOF, CARMIL2 LOF, CTPS1 LOF, CORO1A LOF, and LCK LOF.
Dr. Hauck is vice president of the German Speaking Working Party for Pediatric Immunology, Spokesperson for the Clinical Immunology Working Group (AKKI) German Society for Immunology (DGFI) and member of the clinical working party (CWP) of the European Society for Immunodeficiencies (ESID).

Krönke
After graduating from the Medical University of Vienna in 2002, Gerhard Krönke worked as postdoctoral researcher at the Medical University of Vienna (2002-2004) and the University of Virginia, Charlottesville (2004-2006). From 2006-2015 he conducted his clinical training in Internal Medicine and subsequently in Rheumatology at the University Hospital Erlangen, where he worked as Senior Physician at the Department of Internal Medicine 3 from 2012-2023. In 2016, he was appointed Professor of Translational Immunology at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. In 2023 he moved to Berlin where he is now serving as director of the Medical Department of Rheumatology and Clinical immunology at the Charité University Hospital Berlin. His research focuses on cellular, molecular and metabolic pathways involved in the maintenance and break of immunological self-tolerance as well as the onset and resolution of inflammation. In particular, he is trying to understand the mechanisms and events leading to the development of inflammatory autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematodes and to develop novel strategies for their diagnosis and treatment. In 2014 he received an ERC Starting grant in 2014 as well as an ERC consolidator grant in 2020 and is currently acting as the spokesperson of the DFG research unit FOR2886 “PANDORA” (Pathways triggering AutoimmuNity and Defining Onset of early Rheumatoid Arthritis).

Lee-Kirsch