Academic career

2008                Abitur

2009-2013      Bachelor of Arts Sportwissenschaft (Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Germany)

2014-2016       Master of Sciences Public Health (University of Applied Science Fulda)

2013-2017      Master of Arts Social Science of Sports (Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main)

Professional career

Since 2017      Research Assistant - Institute of Exercis and Public Health, Fakulty of Sport Science, University Leipzig (Jahnallee 59, 04109 Leipzig)

 Education: 

1989 High School Diploma “Maturità Classica” with the evaluation of 60/60 

13.07.1994 Degree in Biological Science, course of Physiopathology (5 years degree, “Nuovo Ordinamento”) with the evaluation of 110/110 cum laude. Thesis title:”The Botulinum G neurotoxin is a Zn-endopeptidase specific for VAMP/synaptobrevin”, supervisor Prof Cesare Montecucco. 

1995 Professional qualification test as a Biologist with the evaluation of 134/150. University of Padova (Padova) 

1999 Member of the Professional Order of Biologists 

29.1.1999 Postgraduate school, Major in Allergology and Clinical Immunology, course of special subject Diagnostic Immunology, with the evaluation of 70/70 cum laude. University of Padova (Padova) 

22.4.2005 PhD in Cardiological Sciences and Clinical Methodology (“17° course”) Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences, Endocrine-metabolic Laboratory, University of Padova. Thesis title:”Obesity and Insulin resistance: cross-talk between the adipose organ and the skeletal muscle”, supervisor Prof Roberto Vettor. 

Awards and grants: 

1996-1997 Awarded a grant from the “Azienda Ospedaliera di Padova” (delibera n. 1448 del 22.11.1995) for a fellowship in the Immunological Section of the Department of Oncological and Surgical Sciences Oncology, University of Padova 

1998-2000 Awarded a 3-years grant from the Italian Fundation for Cancer Research (Fondazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro) 

2000 award-winning for biotechnological research of the ALTA Society at the Joint Symposium SI-SIIIC-BCG-EAACI. Ferrara, June 2000 

2002 Awarded the price for the best abstract at the first Congress of the Italian Society of Obesity (SIO), Verona 2002. 

Educational Teaching Activities: 

assistant supervisor in several Medicine degree thesis or in PhD student activities in which Prof. Roberto Vettor has been the supervisor, implying research activity in the Endocrine-metabolic Laboratory of the Department of Medical and Surgical Science, now Department of Medicine (DIMED) at the University of Padova. 

Work position: 

25.1.2001-now Employed as a laboratory technician (Category D6) in the Endocrine-Metabolic Laboratory, of the “Clinica Medica 3” of the Department of Medicine of the University of Padua, with the equivalence to a Biologist Director, in the Padua Hospital, National Health Service. 

LANGUAGES 

Good level of written and spoken English (B1 level).

University education

1977-1983        Medical School, University of Heidelberg, Germany

Scientific degrees

1983                 Doctoral thesis (MD), German Cancer Research Institute (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany

1990                 Habilitation, Institute of Human Genetics, Medical Faculty of the University of Bonn, Germany

2000                 Habilitation, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Medical Faculty of the Marburg University, Germany

Professional experience

1983-1984        Clinical training in pediatrics, Kinderzentrum München, Germany

1984-1990        Research assistant at the Institute of Human Genetics, University of Bonn, Germany

1990-2004        Training in child and adolescent psychiatry and psychotherapy, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry of the University of Marburg

1995-2004        Head of the DFG-Clinical Research Group “Genetic mechanisms of body weight regulation including obesity and eating disorders”; Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry of the University of Marburg, Germany

2004-present     Professor (C4), Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy of the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany

Editor-in-Chief of European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

Awards and honors

1994                 Research award of the Christina-Barz-Stiftung

2007                 August Homburger Research Prize

2011-2012        President of the German Society of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

2011-2017        Vice-president of the European Association for the Society of Obesity (EASO)

2014-present     Board member of the European Society of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (ESCAP)

Google scholar H-Index 107, 612 publications

Title: Medical student. Research Year student.

Department: Endocrinology, Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark and Steno Diabetes Center, Aarhus, Denmark

Research area:

• Endocrinology. Obesity. Obesity surgery. Epidemiology.

Research description:

• My research provides knowledge and methods that I can apply when I finish my studies as a medical doctor. Further my training during my research will make the foundation for a future PhD study.

 Current position 

Chair of Molecular Nutritional Medicine (W3 Full Professor) TUM School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan, Technical University of Munich 

Academic training 

1981 - 1987 Biology, Philipps-University Marburg 

Academic degrees 

2001 Habilitation and venia legendi for Zoology and Animal Physiology 

1994 Dissertation @Biology Faculty, Philipps University Marburg (Dr. rer. nat.) 

Postgraduate positions 

2011-present Full Professor (W3) for Molecular Nutritional Medicine, TUM School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan, Technical University of Munich 

2007-2011 Professor (W2) for Molecular Nutritional Medicine, TUM School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan, Technical University of Munich 

2004-2006 Deputy Chair, Department of Animal Physiology, Philipps-University Marburg 

2002-2004 Associate Professor for Animal Physiology, Philipps-University Marburg 

1997-2001 Assistant Professor for Animal Physiology, Philipps-University Marburg 

1995-1996 Postdoctoral Fellow: Lipid Research Laboratory, West Los Angeles VA Medical Center, USA and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) 

1994-1995 Postdoctoral Fellow: Department of Animal Physiology, Philipps-University Marburg 

Honors, awards and professional activities 

2022 Coordinator of iMAGO DFG Research Group 

2022 Head of IRTG and member of Steering Board in CRC-TRR33 BATenergy 

2019-2022 Head of IRTG and member of Steering Board in CRC 1371 

Since 2012 Academic Program Director for Nutrition Sciences at TUM 

2019 TUM Supervisory Award 2019 of the Graduate Center Weihenstephan 

2012-2017 Deputy Coordinator of the DFG Research Training Group (GRK1482) 

2011 Full Professor, TUM Chair of Molecular Nutritional Medicine 

2007 Else Kröner-Fresenius Endowment Professorship @ TUM 

2007-2013 Work Block Leader “Functional studies” in the NGFNplus network “Molecular Mechanisms of Obesity” 

2006-2012 Associate Editor of American Journal of Physiology – Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, Bethesda, USA. 

2001 Young Investigator Award of the Philipps-University Marburg 

Nicole den Braver was born on March 2nd 1992 in Amsterdam. In 2013, she obtained her Bachelor in Health & Life Sciences at the VU University in Amsterdam, with a major in Health Science. In 2015, she obtained her MSc Nutrition & Health at the Wageningen University, where she specialized in Epidemiology and Public Health. She then started her PhD research at the department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics of the VUmc in Amsterdam, with Prof. Joline Beulens, Prof. Hans Brug, Dr. Jeroen Lakerveld and Dr. Femke Rutters. Her PhD thesis is titled “Built environment, lifestyle, and diabetes”, in which she investigated the upstream determinants of diabetes incidence and progression. This involved setting up a cohort of 1500 participants in the diabetes research centre in Hoorn, a review and meta-analyses of 109 studies, performance of secondary data analyses (e.g. in the SPOTLIGHT study), and linking environmental data to health data from Dutch cohort studies within the Geoscience and Health Cohort Consortium (GECCO). In 2018, Nicole obtained two travel grants, from the European Foundation for the Study of Diabetes (EFSD) and the Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute (APH), to support her research visit with Prof. Gillian Booth at The Centre for Urban Health Solutions, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, Toronto, Canada. This resulted in the development of a novel drivability index, which represents car dependence of neighborhoods based on built environmental characteristics. This neighborhood drivability was then linked to administrative healthcare data to investigate the association with diabetes incidence. Nicole successfully defended her PhD in January 2021 and has been working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Epidemiology & Data Science, Amsterdam University Medical Centre. Within the EXPOSOME-NL consortium she focusses on investigating the combined impact of environmental determinants on non-communicable disease risk. Nicole is involved in the Policy Evaluation Network (PEN), focusing on the development of a physical activity environment policy index.

My name is Simon Birk Kjær Jensen and I am from Copenhagen, Denmark. I work as a PhD student at the Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Copenhagen. My background is withing exercise and sport sciences (BSc) and i completed my MSc in human physiology in 2018.

i have been part of the Clinical Translational Metabolism group led by prof Signe Torekov since 2017, where i am also doing my PhD (started in spring 2020). My research interest is mainly within the pathophysiology of obesity with particular interest in health-enhancing physical activity and the underlying mechanisms of long-term weight loss maintenance.

• EDUCATION

2001-2006 PhD: Skeletal Muscle Lipid Metabolism: A Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy study

Department of Radiology/Maastricht University Medical Center, The Netherlands

Supervisors: prof. dr. J. van Engelshoven and prof. dr. K. Nicolay

1998/99 MSc in Biology, specialisation Biochemstry (1998) and MSc in Human Nutrition (1999),

ETH (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Zürich,

Switzerland

• CURRENT POSITIONS

2022 – present Full professor, chair: Metabolic Imaging with special focus on Magnetic Resonance

Spectroscopy, department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine and department of Nutrition

and Movement Sciences, Maastricht University Medical Center (MUMC), The Netherlands

2020 – present Research group leader of Metabolic Imaging group, German Diabetes Center, Düsseldorf,

Germany

• PREVIOUS POSITIONS

2018 – 2022 Associate professor, MUMC, Maastricht, The Netherlands

2009 – 2018 Assistant professor, MUMC, Maastricht, The Netherlands

2006 – 2009 Postdoctoral student, MUMC, Maastricht, The Netherlands

2001 – 2006 PhD student, MUMC, Maastricht, The Netherlands

• FELLOWSHIPS (see more acquired grants under early achievements track record page 13)

2018 – present ERC-StG on development of novel MRS techniques in muscle, aimed at top 10-15% of

European researchers, European Commission

2018 Vidi Talent programme, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), targeting

top 10-15% of mid-career researchers; (I declined due to overlap with ERC-StG), The

Netherlands

2012 – 2014 Fellowship from the European Foundation for the Study of Diabetes (EFSD), 9/116 proposals

were awarded.

2010 – 2015 Veni Talent Programme, from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO),

targeting top 10 – 15% of young researchers, The Netherlands

2006 – 2007 Kootstra Talent Fellowship for PhD students, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences,

Maastricht University, The Netherlands

• SUPERVISION OF GRADUATE STUDENTS AND POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS

Since 2006, I have successfully supervised 11 PhD students to completion; another 11 PhD students are

currently working on their thesis (9 at Maastricht University, 2 at German Diabetes Center in Düsseldorf).

I currently supervise 6 postdocs (4 at Maastricht University, 2 at the German Diabetes Center in Düsseldorf)

and 3 MRI technicians (1 at MUMC Maastricht, 2 at the German Diabetes Center in Düsseldorf). I have also

supervised more than 30 Bachelor and Master students.

• ORGANISATION OF SCIENTIFIC MEETINGS