Prof Christian Drosten is a physician by training. He is board certified in virology, medical microbiology and infection epidemiology. He started his professional career at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, where he discovered the unknown virus causing SARS in 2003 and developed a diagnostic test that enabled public health authorities worldwide to stop the agent before it could develop into a pandemic. In 2007, at age 34, he became the founding director of the Institute of Virology at University of Bonn Medical Centre. Since 2017 he heads the Institute of Virology of the Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin. Drosten has co-authored more than 450 peer-reviewed papers and coordinated research consortia funded by the European Union, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and the German Ministry of Research. He received the German Federal Cross of Merit twice (2005, 2020), for his research work and broader contribution to countering the SARS epidemic and the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
