Professorships of 2019
In 2019, the Faculty of Medicine appointed the following professors to the University of Bonn:
Prof. Dr. Ulrike Attenberger
Professorship (W3) for Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology
Ulrike Attenberger succeeded Prof. Schild as Professor of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology at Bonn University Hospital on December 01, 2019. She completed her studies in human medicine at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich from 1999-2005. Her enthusiasm for radiology had already clearly developed by this time, as she also successfully completed her doctorate in this field just a few months later. Ulrike Attenberger remained loyal to her Bavarian homeland for three more years, interrupted by a research stay in Texas.
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In 2009, however, she decided to continue her professional career at the University Medical Center Mannheim, Medical Faculty of the University of Heidelberg. Here, 1 year later, she received her specialist certification and her 1st position as a senior physician. In 2011, she completed her Habilitation as one of the youngest Habilitation holders of the German Radiological Society. Only 3 years later, she was awarded the title of associate professor by the Senate of Heidelberg University. In 2012-2015, research stays took her to Harvard and Vienna, and in 2016, the Anna-Fischer Dükelmann Visiting Professorship to the University of Zurich. In 2018, she was awarded an Adjunct Professorship at MedUni Vienna. Until recently, Prof. Attenberger served as Deputy Director and Managing Senior Doctor of the Institute of Clinical Radiology and Nuclear Medicine in Mannheim. Her clinical and scientific focus is on the optimization and clinical translation of imaging technologies and their integrative evaluation with artificial intelligence (AI) methods for phenotyping tumors and assessing therapeutic success. She has received several awards, including the Fellow Award of the Radiological Society of North America in 2010 and the Walter Friedrich Award for outstanding scientific work in the overall field of radiology in 2012, awarded by the German Society of Radiology.
Prof. Attenberger now wants to contribute her expertise in the field of high-end imaging techniques to the University Medical Center Bonn and thus improve the diagnostic and treatment options for tumor patients. Her focus will be particularly on the implementation of AI techniques for disease characterization and the optimization of minimally invasive therapy strategies.
Prof. Dr. Christian Oliver Vokuhl
Professorship (W2) for Pathology
Christian Oliver Vokuhl succeeded Nicolas Wernert as Professor of Pathology on November 01, 2019.
Mr. Vokuhl initially studied human medicine at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen and at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel. In 2005, he took up his first position as an assistant physician at the Kiel Department of Pediatric Pathology. In the years that followed, he remained true to his adopted northern German home, completed his residency here, and served as a senior physician at the University Hospital of Schleswig-Holstein until the end.
In his clinical as well as in his scientific work in Kiel, his focus was on pediatric pathology, especially molecular pediatric tumor pathology and soft tissue tumor pathology. Here he can show a highly qualified diagnostic expertise. In addition, he was intensively involved in the genetic characterization of childhood solid tumors. He sees this as an essential step towards the development of optimized diagnostic and therapeutic options.
With the move to the University Medical Center Bonn, Mr. Vokuhl would like to further deepen this research activity and support the treatment of particularly young tumor patients with his expertise.
Prof. Dr. Hendrik Streeck
Professorship (W3) for Virology
Hendrik Streeck succeeded Prof. Dorsten as Professor of Virology at the Bonn Institute of Virology on October 01, 2019.
Hendrik Streeck graduated in human medicine from Charité Berlin in 2016. After a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School in Boston, he was appointed Assistant Professor there. In 2015, a call to the W3 professorship in medical biology at the University of Duisburg-Essen prompted him to return to Germany.
In the course of this, he was also able to successfully apply for additional funding for returning top medical researchers from the Else Kröner Foundation. Since 2015, Prof. Streeck has headed the Institute for HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) Research at Essen University Hospital.
Throughout his research activities, the focus is on translational research of vaccine, therapy and cure strategies in the fight against the HI virus. Through his work at various international sites, he has been able to establish many sustainable collaborations with immunologists and virologists from all over the world, thus initiating a large number of successful international projects on HIV research. Important achievements of these projects are the largest epidemiological study on this topic in Germany as well as a first clinical trial for an HIV vaccine. Hendrik Streeck has received several awards for his scientific findings in the past, including the HIV/AIDS Research Prize of the German AIDS Society.
Within the research focus Immunosciences and Infection, Prof. Streeck will also continue his work in Bonn on the development of an HIV vaccine. The Medical Faculty will support this by founding its own institute on this research field within virology.
Prof. Dr. Ehrenfried Schindler
Professorship (W2) for Pediatric Anesthesiology
Ehrenfried Schindler took up the professorship of pediatric anesthesiology at the Department of Anesthesiology and Surgical Intensive Care Medicine on October 01, 2019.
Ehrenfried Schindler studied human medicine at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main until 1990 and obtained his specialist qualification in anesthesiology in 1996 while working at the hospital of the Justus Liebig University in Giessen.
Subsequently, he also acted as senior doctor in Gießen. In 2002, he assumed his first management position as head of the Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine at the Asklepios Clinic in Sankt Augustin. In the years that followed, Ehrenfried Schindler remained true to his adopted home. In 2005 he became Director of the Center for Pediatric Anesthesiology and in 2007 finally Medical Director of the Asklepios Clinic in Sankt Augustin. The focus of his work has always been in the field of pediatric cardioanesthesiology. In this context, he was involved in numerous clinical studies with the aim of optimizing the treatment during the heart-lung machine phase of particularly young patients. In this regard, he successfully established international collaborations with anesthesiologists from all over the world at an early stage. In 2009, he introduced software based on the study results to support the planning of anesthesia in children. His commitment to this clinical focus was eventually reflected in his appointment as President of the European Society of Pediatric Anesthesiology (ESPA) in 2016. He has also been recognized with honorary professorships by both the University of Belgrade (Serbia) and the University of Tbilisi (Georgia).
Along with providing clinical care for pediatric anesthesiology, Schindler will also support obstetrics and newborn care at the Bonn site by managing the emerging parent-child center.
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Prof. Dr. Volker Busskamp
Professorship (W2) for Degenerative Retinal Diseases with Tenure Track
In September 2019, Volker Busskamp received the call to the professorship for Degenerative Retinal Diseases with tenure track, which is assigned to the Eye Clinic of the UKB.
Volker Busskamp studied biotechnology at the TU Braunschweig and biology at the University of Geneva (Switzerland).
He completed his PhD in 2010 at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI) and the University of Basel in Switzerland. After a short postdoctoral period at FMI, Prof. Busskamp went to the laboratory of George Church at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering in Boston (USA) for three years. Since 2014, he has been funded as a Freigeist Fellow of the Volkswagen Foundation and was a research group leader at the Research Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD). In the course of his research, he investigates retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary form of blindness. His research has already led to clinical gene therapy studies. Together with Botond Roska from FMI in Basel, he is involved in 3 gene therapy concepts. In 2015, Volker Busskamp received an ERC Starting Grant for targeted modeling of nerve tissue. Here, he focuses on the production of different nerve cell types, which are subsequently combined in the laboratory. This creates artificial circuits from nerve cells that can be used both as models for diseases and for basic research. In 2017, Prof. Busskamp was awarded the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Young Investigator Award for his biomedical research with the contribution to gene therapy of retinitis pigmentosa and for the development of artificial nerve cell circuits.
Within the scope of his professorship, Volker Busskamp aims to develop innovative therapies to slow down or stop degenerative retinal diseases and to restore vision after blindness. As a biotechnologist, neuroscientist and stem cell researcher, he not only strengthens the neuroscience research focus, but also the mission statement of the Medical Faculty with his translational research.
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Jun-Prof. Dr. Laura Ewell
Junior Professorship for Circuits and Behavior
Laura Ann Ewell was awarded the junior professorship in Circuits and Behavior with tenure track in the Department of Experimental Epileptology and Cognitive Research in April 2019.
She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA) in 2010 and subsequently worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at San Diego (USA). In March 2017, Jun-Prof. Ewell was awarded an exceptionally competitive VW Freigeist Group at the Institute for Experimental Epileptology and Cognitive Research.
Jun-Prof. Ewell strengthens the neuroscience research focus of the School of Medicine. Jun-Prof. Ewell has already been able to publish novel findings on mechanisms that control the activity of neurons in spatial navigation and memory and how these processes are disrupted in epilepsy. In addition, she brings to Bonn a sophisticated technology for measuring single cells with high temporal resolution in freely moving rodents.
Prof. Dr. Janbernd Kirschner
Professorship for Neuropediatrics in the Department of Neuropediatrics at the Center for Pediatrics
Janbernd Kirschner has been appointed to the professorship of Neuropediatrics. Since April 2019, he has now been working at the Center for Pediatrics, where he heads the Department of Neuropediatrics with the Social Pediatric Center (SPC). 5
He completed his medical studies at the Albert-Ludwigs University in Freiburg and received his doctorate there at the Chair of History and Ethics of Medicine. After completing most of his residency, Prof. Kirschner went to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania (USA) for two years on a DFG research fellowship to specialize in neuromuscular diseases. After his return, he took over the management of the myological laboratory in Freiburg. Most recently, Prof. Janbernd Kirschner was W2 Acting Professor and Acting Medical Director of the Department of Neuropediatrics and Muscular Diseases in Freiburg.
Prof. Kirschner's research focus in the field of neuromuscular diseases is the application of innovative therapies in clinical trials.
Prof. Dr. Rainer Surges
Professorship for Epileptology at the Clinic and Polyclinic for Epileptology
Rainer Surges succeeded Prof. Elger as Professor of Epileptology at the Clinic and Polyclinic for Epileptology on April 01, 2019.
During his medical studies in Bonn, he spent an ERASMUS study year in France and an internship year in Canada, Malta and France.
After his experimental doctoral thesis on cellular cardiac electrophysiology, Prof. Surges worked as a doctor in internship and assistant doctor at the Neurological University Hospital Freiburg, before he went to the Institute of Neurology (London, UK) as a postdoc for two and a half years with a DFG grant. Rainer Surges then returned to Bonn to the Clinic for Epileptology before moving to the Clinic for Neurology at Aachen University Hospital as Head of the Epileptology Section. He received professorships in epileptology at the University of Newcastle and the RWTH Aachen, before he became head of the Clinic and Polyclinic for Epileptology here.
Prof. Surges strengthens the neuroscientific research focus of the Medical Faculty. For several years, his scientific focus has been on clinical epilepsy research with the goal, among others, of identifying laboratory chemical and physiological biomarkers that allow correct or automated seizure detection.
Prof. Dr. Veronika Lukacs-Kornek
Professorship for Immunodynamics at the Institute of Experimental Immunology
Veronika Lukacs-Kornek took over the professorship of Immunodynamics at the Institute of Experimental Immunology from Prof. Kastenmüller in February 2019.
She received her PhD in human medicine from Semmelweis University in Budapest (Hungary) and her PhD in biology from the Institute of Molecular Medicine and Experimental Immunology at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Bonn.
After her PhD, Prof. Lukacs-Kornek worked for four years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute of Harvard Medical School in Boston (MA, USA) before returning to Germany in 2012, when she received the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and was tenured as an Assistant Professor of Molecular Immunology and Gastroenterology at Saarland University.
Prof. Lukacs-Kornek joins the Immunosciences and Infection research focus of the Faculty of Medicine. She works at the interface between immunoregulation and stromal cell biology and investigates how the immunoregulatory relationship between immune cells and stromal cells contributes to the maintenance of tissue integrity or disease progression.