Petra Gastmeier MD

After specialization in hygiene and environmental medicine, Petra Gastmeier worked from 1991 to 2000 as a hospital epidemiologist in Potsdam and the university hospital of the Free University Berlin. During this time, she created the German National Surveillance System for Healthcare-associated Infections (KISS) with meanwhile more than 1300 participating hospitals. From 2001 to 2007, she was an associate professor of Hospital Epidemiology at Hanover Medical University. Since 2008, she has been a Full Professor of Hygiene and Environmental Medicine at Charité –University Medicine in Berlin.

Petra Her research focuses on the investigation of the epidemiology of healthcare-associated infections, multiresistant organisms, and antibiotic usage in hospitals and the community. She also established the German national hand hygiene campaign, which has meanwhile running for more than 10 years, and the outbreak database platform for identifying sources and appropriate intervention measures during outbreaks of nosocomial infections. In 2015, she received the Robert Koch Award for Hospital Epidemiology. Petra Gastmeier is the author or co-author of more than 400 articles in the field of hospital epidemiology and infection control.