Professor Thomas Willnow of MDC Receives Honorary Doctorate from Aarhus University
Professor Thomas Willnow (Photograph: David Ausserhofer/ Copyright: MDC)
The university honored him for his achievements in biomedical research and their implementation into practice (translational research) at Aarhus University. The title “Doctor Medicinae Honoris Causa” (dr.med.h.c.) was conferred at a ceremony on September 11, 2009 in connection with the university’s 81st anniversary.
Professor Willnow heads a molecular research laboratory in the field of cardiovascular research at the MDC and has worked closely with researchers from Aarhus University for many years.
In collaboration with his colleagues he discovered the molecular mechanism which causes the death not only of damaged neurons, but also of healthy nerve cells when the spinal cord is injured or a person suffers a stroke.
Recently he also coordinated an EU-wide effort to establish a digital kidney atlas as a resource for researchers and clinicians. Together with scientists at Aarhus University Professor Willnow has successfully founded several biotech companies. NeuronIcon, one of these biotechnology companies, has just been taken over by the pharma company Lundbeck.
Thomas Willnow was born on November 1, 1961 in Heidelberg. He studied biology in Munich where he received his PhD in biochemistry in 1992. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Southwestern Medical Center of the University of Texas in Dallas, USA until in 1996 he became head of a junior research group at the MDC. In 2001 he was appointed head of a senior research group at MDC and full professor at the Free University Berlin.
He received numerous awards for his research, including the Research Award of the Alzheimer Research Initiative, Cologne (2006), the Butenandt Award of the Ernst Schering Research Foundation (2000) and the Heinrich Wieland Award (2008). In 1996, he was a Heisenberg Fellow of the German Research Foundation.
Barbara Bachtler
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