Scientific Leader and CEO of HUB
Prof. Dr. Thomas Illig
+49 511 5350 - 8450
Illig.Thomas@mh-hannover.de
Background
Since January 2012 Thomas Illig is director of the Hannover Unified Biobank (HUB), the central biobank of Hannover Medical School (MHH). Prof. Illig and his team have established a modern, highly automated biobanking centre, which is one of the biggest clinical biobanks in Germany. He has a longstanding experience in biobanking research as well as molecular and genetic epidemiology. He co-organized large population based and disease related biobanking studies. Prof. Illig pioneered work on the combination of different systematic molecular data eg. the combination of genome wide association (GWAs) and metabolomics, transcriptomics or epigenomics, leading to better understanding of complex diseases. Prof. Illig has co-organized the Module “Clinical Studies and Biobanking” in the master course “Biomedical Data Sciences” at Hannover Medical School. Thomas Illig is actively involved in advancing the German Biobank Node (GBN) and the German Biobank Allince (GBA), where he has been deputy speaker for 6 years. Dr. Illig is one of the speakers of the National Pandemic Cohort Network (NAPKON) that has recruited several thousand patient suffering from COVID 19. In NAPKON he is head of the Biobank Core Unit (BCU) being responsible for different biosample quality aspects. He is author on more than 600 peer-reviewed publications also in leading journals such as Science, Nature, Nature Genetics, Plos Genetics, Lancet and the American Journal of Human Genetics. Prof. Illig has been one of the mostly cited researchers worldwide in the research field of Molecular Biology.
Education
- 2012 Adjunct professor at Hannover Medical School
- 2010 Adjunct professor at Ludwig Maximilians-University Munich
- 2006 Postdoctoral lecture qualification (“Habilitation”) and conferral of associate professorship (“Priv.-Doz.”) at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University München, „Concepts of genomic association studies to decipher complex diseases“
- 1995 Doctor in biology by thesis „O-Glycosilation in Saccharomyces cerevisae“, Department of Cell Biology, University of Regensburg
- 1992 - 1995 PhD in Cell Biology, O-Glycosilation in yeast, University of Regensburg
- 1986 - 1991 Study of biology, University of Regensburg
Professional Experience
- Since 01/2012 Director of Hannover Unified Biobank (HUB), Hannover Medical School
- 01/2011 - 12/2011 Head of Research Unit of Molecular Epidemiology, Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen, German Research Center for Environmental Health, Neuherberg,
- 2001 - 2010 Group leader of working group “Epidemiology-Biobanking-Genomics” in the Institute of Epidemiology Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen, German Research Center for Environmental Health, Neuherberg,
- 1998 - 2001 PostDoc, Institute of Epidemiology, Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen, German Research Center for Environmental Health, Neuherberg
- 1996 - 1998 PostDoc, Institute of Mammalian Genetics, Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen, German Research Center for Environmental Health, Neuherberg
- 1995 - 1996 PostDoc, Department of Cell Biology, University of Regensburg Teaching experience