Leena Bruckner-Tuderman is professor and chair of the Department of Dermatology at the Medical Center – University of Freiburg, in Freiburg, Germany, and coordinator of the Freiburg Center for Rare Diseases. As a physician-scientist she combines basic and translational research with patient care.
She studied medicine in Oulu, Finland, and after an experimental dissertation in molecular medicine, continued her postdoctoral work in biochemistry in Piscataway, N.J., USA, and in structural biology in Basel, Switzerland. She specialized in dermatology at University of Zurich, Switzerland and was a Score-Fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Thereafter she became a Heisenberg fellow of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and moved to the Münster University, Germany, where she became professor of dermatology. During this period in Münster she was also a visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong and at the Harvard Medical School, Boston. In 2003 she relocated to University of Freiburg, where she also was fellow and director of the School of Life Sciences – LIFENET of the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies in 2007 – 2013.
She has been and continues to be a board member of numerous national and international committees, organizations and foundations, organizer of programmes and conferences, e.g. Gordon Research Conferences. She has received numerous prizes, is a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Vice President for Medicine of the German Research Foundation, DFG.
The research focus of the Bruckner-Tuderman lab encompasses molecular genetics and disease mechanisms of rare skin diseases, and development of molecular therapies, as well as biology of basement membranes and the extracellular matrix, epithelial-mesenchymal communication, cell-matrix interactions.