MedUni Vienna has a six-member Scientific Advisory Board to advise its Rectorate, providing an external perspective on issues that are strategically important for the future. BioNTech co-founder Christoph Huber is a new addition to this Board, having taken up his post on 20 October 2021.
Huber is a haematologist, immunologist and oncologist and sits on numerous boards and committees. He established a stem cell transplantation and immunotherapy programme in Innsbruck and a leading international centre for immuno-oncology and stem cell transplantation in Mainz. In 2001, together with Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci, he founded Ganymed, which develops monoclonal antibodies against tumour antigens; in 2008 he established BioNTech, which researches genetically modified defence cells, mRNA-encoded antibodies and mRNA vaccines, among others, and produced the first approved Covid-19 vaccine and in 2010 he set up the not-for-profit translational oncology institute TRON.
"Medicine is undergoing a radical paradigm shift. The more genetic analysis advances, the better we understand the uniqueness of people and their diseases. This enables us to develop individual and targeted therapies within the framework of precision medicine. To this end, MedUni Vienna will be building pioneering centres for precision medicine and translational medicine over the next few years. I am delighted to be able to use my experience to help MedUni Vienna become an international pioneer in the field of precision medicine," says Christoph Huber of his appointment to the Advisory Board.
High-calibre committee
The Scientific Advisory Board of MedUni Vienna advises the members of the Rectorate on all important clinical, research and teaching issues with a view to assuring the strategic positioning of the university. The Board also makes proposals to contribute to international benchmarking.
The Board has so far comprised six high-calibre, internationally acclaimed researchers: Federica Sallusto, Institute of Biomedicine in Bellinzona, Switzerland; Hedvig Hricak, Chair of the Department of Radiology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City; Joseph Thomas Coyle, Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Harvard Medical School; Robert Schwarcz, Professor of Psychiatry, Pharmacology and Pediatrics, Department of Psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine; Michael Roden, Chair and Professor of Medicine, Scientific Director of the German Diabetes Center (DDZ) and Director of the Institute for Clinical Diabetology at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, and Sarah König, Director of the Institute for Medical Education and Training Research at Julius Maximilian University in Würzburg. For more information about the Scientific Advisory Board of MedUni Vienna: https://bit.ly/3DX3LOe