Nikolaus Rajewsky

Nikolaus Rajewsky is the scientific director of the Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology at the Max Delbrück Center (MDC-BIMSB) in Berlin Mitte, which he founded in 2008. The MDC-BIMSB now houses about 25 labs. His research investigates how and why genes are switched on or off in healthy and diseased cells, and he develops methods to interfere with disease trajectories. To this end, he combines computational approaches (computer science, statistics, theoretical physics) with methods from biochemistry and molecular biology.

Nikolaus studied theoretical physics at the University of Cologne, where he received his PhD, and went on to hold research and faculty positions in the United States at Rutgers University, Rockefeller University, and New York University before being appointed Professor for Systems Biology at the MDC and Charité in Berlin in 2006.

He is a member of numerous international advisory boards, an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. He is among the most highly cited researchers in his field and has received numerous awards, including an honorary doctorate from La Sapienza University in Rome and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize from the German Research Foundation (DFG).