A human pathogen is a pathogen that causes disease in humans.
The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. Founded in 1911 as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, it was renamed to the Max Planck Society in 1948 in honor of its former president, theoretical physicist Max Planck. The society is funded by the federal and state governments of Germany.
The Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (MPIB) is a research institute of the Max Planck Society located in Martinsried, a suburb of Munich. The institute was founded in 1973 by the merger of three formerly independent institutes: the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, the Max Planck Institute of Protein and Leather Research, and the Max Planck Institute of Cell Chemistry.
The Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics is a Max Planck Institute whose research is aimed at investigating Einstein's theory of relativity and beyond: Mathematics, quantum gravity, astrophysical relativity, and gravitational-wave astronomy. The institute was founded in 1995 and is located in the Potsdam Science Park in Golm, Potsdam and in Hannover where it closely collaborates with the Leibniz University Hannover. Both the Potsdam and the Hannover parts of the institute are organized in three research departments and host a number of independent research groups.
The Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine was founded on 1 April 2001 in Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is part of the Max Planck Society. The current managing director is professor Dietmar Vestweber.
The Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces is located in Potsdam-Golm Science Park in Golm, Potsdam, Germany. It was founded in 1990 as a successor of the Institute for Physical Chemistry and for Organic Chemistry, both in Berlin-Adlershof, and for Polymer Chemistry in Teltow. In 1999, it transferred to newly constructed extension facilities in Golm. It is one of 80 institutes in the Max Planck Society (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft).
The Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology is a research institute for terrestrial microbiology in Marburg, Germany. It was founded in 1991 by Rudolf K. Thauer and is one of 80 institutes in the Max Planck Society (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft). Its sister institute is the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, which was founded a year later in 1992 in Bremen.
The Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg, Germany is an interdisciplinary research institute that conducts basic research in modern immunobiology, developmental biology and epigenetics. It was founded in 1961 as the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and is one of 86 institutions of the Max Planck Society. Originally named the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology, it was renamed to its current name in 2010 as it widened its research thrusts to the study of epigenetics.
The Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biology of Ageing, founded in 2008, is one of over 80 independent, non-profit-making institutes set up under the umbrella of the Max Planck Society. The overall research aim is to obtain fundamental insights into the aging process and thus to pave the way towards healthier aging in humans. An international research team drawn from almost 30 nations is working to uncover underlying molecular, physiological and evolutionary mechanisms.
Stefan Hugo Ernst Kaufmann is a German immunologist and microbiologist and is one of the highly cited immunologists worldwide for the decade 1990 to 2000. He is amongst the 0.01% most cited scientists of ca. 7 million scientists in 22 major scientific fields globally.
The Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex systems is one of the 80 institutes of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, located in Dresden, Germany.
In biology, a pathogen, in the oldest and broadest sense, is any organism or agent that can produce disease. A pathogen may also be referred to as an infectious agent, or simply a germ.
Jörg Vogel is a German scientist in the field of RNA biology and microbiology. He holds a position as full professor, chairs the Institute for Molecular Infection Biology (IMIB) at the University of Würzburg, Germany, and is a founding Helmholtz-Institute director. Vogel studied biochemistry at the Humboldt University of Berlin and the Imperial College London. After his PhD work (1996–1999) he performed postdoctoral research at the Uppsala University, Sweden and was an EMBO fellow at the Hebrew University Jerusalem, Israel. From 2004 to 2009 he was a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology. Since 2009 he is a full professor at the IMIB and head of the institute as successor to Jörg Hacker. Furthermore, he is founding director of the Helmholtz-Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI) in Würzburg that was established in 2017.
Emmanuelle Marie Charpentier is a French professor and researcher in microbiology, genetics, and biochemistry. As of 2015, she has been a director at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin. In 2018, she founded an independent research institute, the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens. In 2020, Charpentier and American biochemist Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for the development of a method for genome editing". This was the first science Nobel Prize ever won by two women only.
Arturo Casadevall is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Molecular Microbiology & Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and the Alfred and Jill Sommer Professor and Chair of the W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is an internationally recognized expert in infectious disease research, with a focus on fungal and bacterial pathogenesis and basic immunology of antibody structure-function. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
Hedda Wardemann is an immunologist and Professor in the Division of B cell immunology at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany.
Regine Kahmann is a German microbiologist and was Director at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg from 2000 to 2019. She was made a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMRS) in 2020.
Arturo Zychlinsky is a biologist and since 2001 director at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology. His research focuses on Neutrophil Extracellular Traps (NETs) which he discovered together with Volker Brinkmann, and the immune function of chromatin.
Alex Sigal is a South Africa–based virologist at the Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI) in Durban, South Africa, Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin, and University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban. His work concentrates on evolution and persistence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. His laboratory was the first to isolate the live B.1.351 (Beta) variant of SARS-CoV-2 first detected in South Africa. Sigal’s laboratory was also the first to report results on the ability of the Omicron variant to escape antibody neutralization in individuals who had two doses of the Pfizer BNT162b2 vaccine as well as from previous infections, with results also suggesting that vaccination combined with a booster or previous infection can offer protection from symptomatic infection with Omicron.
Nishith Gupta is an Indian-German molecular biologist and parasitologist known for his pioneering work in the field of Host–pathogen interaction and cell signalling. He is currently working as Professor, Senior Fellow of the Wellcome Trust-DBT and Head of the Department of Biological Sciences at the Hyderabad campus of Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani.
