Prof. Dr. Sabine Werner

Sabine Werner has been Professor of Cell Biology at the ETH Zurich since February 1999. 

Sabine Werner studied Biochemistry at the Universities of Tubingen and Munich. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Munich, after having completed her dissertation at the Max-Planck-Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried in the department of Prof. Peter Hans Hofschneider. After a short postdoctoral period at the same institute, she moved to the University of California San Francisco, where she started to work on the molecular mechanisms of growth factor action and tissue repair as a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Prof. Lewis T. Williams. From 1993-1999 she was a group leader at the Max-Planck-Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany. In 1996 she obtained a Hermann-and-Lilly Schilling professorship of Medical Research at the same institute and from 1995-1999 she was also Associate Professor of Biochemistry at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich. 

Major research interests:

• Molecular and cellular mechanisms of cutaneous wound repair and the parallels to cancer

• Mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of inflammatory skin disease
• Molecular and cellular mechanisms of liver regeneration

In particular, the group studies the roles of growth factors and their downstream targets in these processes.

Honors and awards:

• Kékulé-Fellowship of the “Verband der Chemischen Industrie”, 1987
• Otto-Hahn-Medal of the Max-Planck-Society, 1990
• Postdoctoral Fellowship, Max-Planck-Society, 1991
• Young Investigator Award of the Wound Healing Society, 1994
• Hermann-und-Lilly-Schilling Professorship of Medical Research, 1995
• Pfizer Academic Award, 1998
• Chair, Gordon Conference on Tissue Repair and Regeneration, 2001
• Wound Healing Award of the German Surgical Society, 2002
• Research Award of the AETAS Foundation, 2003
• Elected to the Research Council (Forschungsrat) of the Swiss National Science Foundation, 2005
• Cloëtta Award (Foundation Prof. Dr. Max Cloëtta), 2008 (http://www.ethlife.ethz.ch/archive_articles/081209_Cloetta-Preis_2008.html)
• René Touraine Lecture, ESDR Ann. Meeting, Budapest, 2009

·      CE.R.I.E.S. Research Award for Achievements in Dermatological Research, 2009

• Chair, Gordon Conference on Fibroblast Growth Factors in Development and Disease, 2010
• 30^th Alfred Marchionini Memorial Lecture, Hamburg, Germany, 2010
• Elected Member of the Leopoldina (German Academy of Sciences), 2011
• Elected as EMBO Member, 2012 
• Charles Lapière Memorial Lecture, European Tissue Repair Society Ann. Meeting 2012 
• “Golden Owl” for best teaching in Biology, 2014 
• Elected to the Council (Stiftungsrat) of the Swiss National Science Foundation, 2015
• Selection of SKINTEGRITY (a consortium chaired by Sabine Werner) as FLAGSHIP project of “University Medicine Zurich”, 2016 
• Ernst Klenk Lecture, Cologne, Germany, 2017
• Spark Award for the most promising invention at ETH Zurich in 2016, awarded 2017

• Keynote Lecture: Gordon Research Conference on Tissue Repair and Regeneration, 2019 
• FEBS National Lecturer, 70^th Annual Conference of the Hellenic Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 
• “Golden Owl” for best teaching in Biology, 2019 

·      2020: Elected as Member of the European Academy of Sciences (EURASC)

·      2020: Chair of the OpenETH Project SKINTEGRITY.CH 

• More than 350 invited presentations