Dietmar Schmitz PhD

Dietmar Schmitz, born in Lennestadt in 1968, studied medicine at the University of Cologne and received his doctorate in 1997. As a postdoctoral fellow, he conducted research at the Institute for Neurophysiology at the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin from 1997 to 1999, then at the University of California (San Francisco/CA, USA) until 2002 and then returned as a junior group leader, funded by the Emmy Noether program the Charité back. Since 2005 he has been Professor of Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology and Director of the Neuroscience Research Center at the Charité. He was a spokesman for the NeuroCure Cluster of Excellence (2007–2012). Since 2011 he has been a spokesman for the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE). In the same year, he was appointed as the first Einstein Professor, funded by the Einstein Foundation Berlin. He was a member of the Young Academy of the BBAW and the Leopoldina (2004–2009). The numerous prizes and honors with which his achievements have been recognized include the award of the Bernard Katz Lecture 2005/2006 and the Schilling Research Prize of the Neuroscientific Society (2005).