Axel Brakhage new Vice President of the DFG
He succeeds Katja Becker, who became DFG President in early 2020
| by Christine Vogler
The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft - DFG) has two new Vice Presidents: At its meeting on Wednesday, 1 July 2020, the General Assembly of the DFG elected molecular biologist Professor Dr. Axel A. Brakhage and engineering scientist Professor Dr.-Ing. Hans Hasse to the Executive Committee of the largest research funding organisation and central self-governing body for science in Germany. Brakhage succeeds Professor Dr. Katja Becker, who has been President of the DFG since the beginning of 2020. Hasse takes over from the engineering scientist Professor Dr.-Ing. Frank Allgöwer.
In addition to the two new members of the Presiding Committee, the English literary scholar Julika Griem was elected as Vice President and the chemist Roland A. Fischer as Vice President for a further term of office. As with all committee meetings of the DFG's Annual General Meeting 2020, the General Assembly was held as a video conference in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Axel A. Brakhage holds the Chair of Microbiology and Molecular Biology at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena and is Scientific Director of the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology (Leibniz-HKI). The infection biology of human-pathogenic fungi is one of his main research areas, as well as microbial communication or the search for microbial active compounds and the development of antibiotics. He is associated with the DFG not least as spokesperson of a graduate school funded in the Excellence Initiative, a Collaborative Research Centre (SFB)/Transregio and, since 2019, the Cluster of Excellence "Balance of the Microverse". In addition, he was a member for eight years, including four years as spokesperson of a review board. Brakhage is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, of which he was appointed Senator in 2020, and a fellow of both the European and the American Academy of Microbiology.