Speaker
Prof. Andrea Superti Furga, Switzerland
Dr. Andrea Superti-Furga has obtained his medical degrees at the Universities of Genoa (Italy) in 1984 and Zurich (Switzerland) in 1989. His mentors were Professors Paolo Durand, Victor McKusick, Andrea Prader, Andreas Fanconi, Richard Gitzelmann and Beat Steinmann. He obtained board certification in Pediatrics in Italy (1988) and Switzerland (1995). Through his early internship with P. Durand in Genova he developed an interest in Inborn Metabolic Diseases, and he developed an intense laboratory research activity in Zurich and during stages at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, his main research themes being inborn metabolic diseases, inherited diseases of connective tissue, and skeletal dysplasias and dysostoses. After his Habilitation at the University of Zurich in 1995, he was appointed Full Professor for Molecular Pediatrics at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) in 2002 under the direction of Prof. Sergio Fanconi; in 2004, he was appointed Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics and Director of the Children’s Hospital at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Parallel to his research interest in rare diseases, he maintained strong ties to general clinical pediatrics as well as university teaching of Pediatrics, being the chief organizer of lectures and courses in Pediatrics at both the Lausanne University (2002-2005) and the Freiburg University (since 2005-2010) Schools of Medicine. In October 2010, Dr. Superti-Furga was awarded the Leenaards Chair of Excellence in Pediatrics at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, where he now is Director of Research of the Department of Pediatrics.
A representative of science- and molecular biology-based pediatrics both in research and in clinical practice, Dr. Superti-Furga is committed to a holistic approach to pediatrics with a comprehensive perspective that includes the genetic and molecular bases of development and disease, the growth and development of healthy children as well as those with chronic disease, and the social, economical and ethical issues around disabled children with rare diseases and their families. His current research activity is centered on the clinical delineation and molecular elucidation of genetic disorders, particularly of the skeleton and connective tissue.
