Human and Animal Relationships

Axel A. Brakhage earned a Master's degree in Biology with the major subject Microbiology at the University of Münster. During his PhD he spent a year at the Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique in Paris. After obtaining a PhD on the regulation of the phenylalanyl-tRNA synthetase in Bacillus subtilis , he joined the Biotechnology Department of BASF as a staff scientist. He then started work on the molecular biology of filamentous fungi as a postdoctoral student at the University of Sheffield (UK). After two years, he became an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Genetics and Microbiology at the University of Munich where he earned his habilitation in Microbiology. In 1998 he became Associate Professor at the Darmstadt University of Technology. During 2001-2004 he was chair and Full Professor of Microbiology at the University of Hanover. From 2004 he has held a chair of Microbiology and Molecular Biology at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. In 2005 he became head of the Department of Molecular and Applied Microbiology at the Leibniz Institute of Natural Product Research and Infection Biology - Hans-Knoell-Institute (Leibniz-HKI) - in Jena and, simultaneously, he serves as the Director of the Institute. He is a member of several scientific boards and a Vice President of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. In addition, he is Speaker of the DFG Collaborative Research Centre/Transregio 124 "FungiNet", was founding speaker of the cluster of excellence "Balance of the Microverse" and serves on the editorial boards of several journals. He has received the Seeliger-Award for Bacteriology and Mycology (2006) and the Main Research Award of the German Society for Hygiene und Microbiology (DGHM). In addition, he is elected member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and of both the American and European Academy of Microbiology. His research addresses two main areas: (1) pathobiology of the most important airborne fungal pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus . (2) molecular regulation of the biosynthesis of fungal secondary metabolites with emphasis on microbial communication and shaping of microbiomes.

Olaf Kniemeyer studied biology with the major subject Microbiology at the University of Bremen. He completed his Master thesis (Diplom) about anaerobic cholesterol degradation in 1998.
He performed his dissertation and a short postdoctoral time under the supervision of Friedrich Widdel at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Bremen in the field of anaerobic hydrocarbon degradation. After a short stay as visiting scientist at the University of Sheffield (UK) in the lab of Geoffrey Turner he joined the laboratory of Axel A. Brakhage at the Leibniz University of Hanover in 2003. Since 2005, he is scientific co-worker at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology - Hans-Knoell-Institute (HKI) in Jena and since 2009 Deputy Head of the Department of Molecular and Applied Microbiology of Axel Brakhage. His work focuses on the application of proteomics methods to study the human-pathogenic fungus Aspergillus fumigatus and other Aspergilli. Olaf Kniemeyer serves on the editorial board of several journals and has received funding for his research from funding agencies such as DFG, GIF and BMBF.

Peter F. Zipfel studied Biology and Biochemistry with specialization in Cellular Biology. In 1984 he graduated from the University in Bremen. He performed his postdoctoral studies at the Laboratory of Immunoregulation at the NIAID, National Institutes of Health in Bethesda (Md., USA). Then he moved to the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg where he headed a junior research group. He received his Habilitation and venia legendi from the University of Hamburg in 1993 in the areas of Immunology and Genetics. In 2000 he was appointed University Professor for Infection Biology at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena and at the same time chairman of the Department of Infection Biology at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology - Hans-Knoell-Institute (HKI) - in Jena. He is author of over 400 research papers, book chapters and review articles, holds several patents and has edited a book on the role of the complement system in human renal diseases. He has received the Research Price for Basic Science from the State of Thueringen (2004), the "Heinz-Spitzbart Preis" of the European Society for Infectious Diseases in Obstetrics and Gyneacology (ESIDOG; 2007), the EFIS Lecture Award of the European Federation of Immunological Societies (2008), the Main Research Award of the German Society of Hygiene and Microbiology (DGHM) in 2009. In addition, he received the Galenus von Pergamon Award in Basic Sciences (2014) and the Medal in Gold for life-time research achievements from the European Complement Network, ECN (2023). His scientific interests include: (1) understanding the role of the complement system as a part of the innate immune system in health and disease, (2) how human pathogenic fungi such as Candida albicans and Aspergillus fumigatus and numerous other pathogens utilize host complement components for immune evasion.