Gülsah Gabriel

Gülşah Gabriel is head of the department Viral Zoonoses - One Health at the Leibniz Institute of Virology (LIV) in Hamburg and professor for Viral Zoonoses at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hannover. Her research focus is to understand the molecular basis of influenza A virus interspecies transmission from birds to humans as well as pathomechanisms in high-risk groups. During the COVID-19 pandemic, her research group was among the first to identify key pathomechanisms that are currently discussed to contribute to long-term consequences after acute respiratory infections. These include SARS-CoV-2 replication in human adipose tissue (Zickler et al., Cell Metabolism 2022) and altered sex hormone metabolism in COVID-19 patients (Schroeder et al., Emerging Microbes & Infections 2021; Stanelle-Bertram et al., Cell Reports Medicine 2023). She has received many prestigious awards for her research, e.g. the Robert-Koch Förderpreis awarded from the Robert-Koch Foundation, the Best Minds Award from the Leibniz Association and the DZIF Award for Translational Infection Research from the German Center for Infection. Since 2024, Gülşah Gabriel is speaker of the newly established Leibniz Lab Pandemic Preparedness: One Health, One Future that combines the expertise of 41 Leibniz Institutes from various disciplines with practical knowledge to develop evidence-based strategies that permanently strengthen the pandemic resilience of science and society.