Mathias W. Pletz, Professor for Infectious Diseases is the funding chair of the Institute for Infectious Diseases and Infection Control of the University Hospital of the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena (Germany). After his medical training at the University of Leipzig, Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, TX, USA) and the University of Basel (Switzerland), he started his residency at the Chest Hospital in Berlin (Germany). Subsequently, he spent two years as postdoc at the Emory University (Atlanta, GA, USA) working on multi-resistant pneumococci. Simultaneously, he served as a guest researcher at the CDC in Atlanta, exploring the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemics. Afterwards he finished medical training at the Hannover Medical School before he accepted the appointment in Jena. He is president of the German-Austrian-Swiss Paul-Ehrlich-Society for Anti-infective Therapy, the Deputy Director of the German Competence Network for Community-Acquired Pneumonia (CAPNETZ), and scientific advisor for the Robert Koch Institute and the WHO. He has published more than 400 papers on respiratory infections, sepsis, antimicrobial resistance and antibiotic stewardship and serves on several editorial boards. He has received numerous scientific awards, e.g. the Honor Award Certificate from the CDC, the Kass Award of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the Respiratory Infections Awards from the European Respiratory Society.
