Geneticist Josef Penninger is probably one of the best-known faces in the local scientific community. The long-time scientist, born on September 5, 1964 in Gurten, Upper Austria, has now published almost 800 scientific publications.
These include influential contributions, for example on the ACE2 receptor, which the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen uses to enter human cells, but also on decoding the important role of the body’s own protein RANKL in many bodily functions or diseases such as osteoporosis or breast cancer in the much-praised development of 3D models of human blood vessels (“organoids”).
From 1994, Penninger was ‘principal investigator’ at the American genetic engineering company Amgen and at the same time assistant professor at the Institute for Immunology and Medical Biophysics of the University of Toronto, where – after completing his habilitation in 1997 at the University of Innsbruck – he became an associate and later a professor in 1998.
In 2002 he returned to Austria and took over the IMBA in Vienna, which was founded in 2003 and developed under his leadership into an internationally renowned research institute. Many of his most important scientific publications were written in Vienna.
Last year, he became scientific director of the German Helmholtz Center for Infection Research (HZI), headquartered in Braunschweig. At the same time, the geneticist was given a “25 percent professorship” for personalized medicine at the Medical University of Vienna. “I already work 70 to 80 hours a week, including weekends – that is very easy to combine,” says the scientist.
Source: Krone
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