Scientific Advisory Board

Dr. Martin J. Blaser holds the Henry Rutgers Chair of the Human Microbiome at Rutgers University and serves as Director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine. Previously, he served as Chair of the Department of Medicine at New York University. A physician and microbiologist, Dr. Blaser has been studying the relationships we have with the human microbiome, the bacteria that live in us. Over the last 20 years, he has also been actively studying the relationship of the human microbiome with both health and important diseases including asthma, obesity, diabetes, and cancer. Dr. Blaser has been the advisor to many students, post-doctoral fellows, and faculty. He has served as President of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, Chair of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Cancer Institute, and Chair of the Advisory Board for Clinical Research of the NIH. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy for Arts and Sciences. He has authored over 600 original scientific articles, holds 24 U.S. patents, and he also wrote Missing Microbes, a book targeted to general audiences, now translated into 20 languages.

Dr. Douglas Golenbock is Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Immunology in the Department of Medicine. He holds a joint appointment in the Department of Microbiology and Physiological Systems. He was educated at the University of Michigan and, after college and medical school, received postgraduate training at George Washington University, the University of Wisconsin, the Rockefeller University and Merck Research Laboratories in Rahway. He is especially interested in the role of Toll-like receptors, and related innate immune receptors, in the basic inflammatory response to infectious pathogens such as malaria, and in degenerative neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease. Dr. Golenbock also has expertise in how these same innate immune pathways can be harnessed by chemicals known as adjuvants to improve the immune response to vaccines.

Prof. Johannes Huebner studied medicine in Freiburg and completed a doctorate in hospital hygiene and infectious diseases immediately after university. He started a specialist training in pediatrics at the University Children's Hospital Freiburg. During a research stay at Harvard Medical School in the field of vaccine research at the Channing Laboratory his research interests focused on carbohydrate surface structures of gram-positive bacteria. The laboratory has been working on the development of a vaccine against enterococci for more than 20 years. Until 2004, he continued this work in Boston as Principal Investigator and Assistant Professor at the Harvard Medical School and from 2004 onwards at the University Hospital of Freiburg at the division of adult infectious diseases. In 2011, Prof. Huebner was promoted as Head of the Department of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Dr. von Hauner's Children's Hospital, where he established one of the first pediatric antibiotic stewardship programs in Germany.