Speaker
Dr. Bernd Wollnik, Germany
Bernd Wollnik, MD, is head of a research group at the Center for Molecular Medicine Cologne (CMMC) and Institute of Human Genetics at the University of Cologne, Germany. After graduation as a medical doctor from the University in Bonn he was medical fellow and postdoc at Center for Molecular Neurobiology, University of Hamburg in Germany. In 1997 he received a DAAD fellowship for young scientist to continue his scientific work at the Child Heath Institute at the University of Istanbul, Turkey. He got a foreign lecturer position at Istanbul University in 1999 as head of the Division of Molecular Genetics of the Child Health Institute. During his time in Turkey, Bernd Wollnik received the International Scientific Award of Istanbul University (2001) and the Young Scientist Award of the Turkish Academy of Science (2002). After returning back to Germany he established his group at the CMMC. His main research interests are to elucidate the molecular pathogenesis of craniofacial and skeletal malformation syndromes, and progeria-associated phenotypes. During the last years his group identified several disease-causing genes and the underlying molecular mechanisms. Bernd Wollnik is member of the national rare disease consortia SKELNET and FACE, an actively funded member of the Cologne Excellence Cluster on Cellular Stress Responses in Aging-Associated Diseases (CECAD), and co-ordinator of the ERARE network CRANIRARE.
