Rate My Professor Sebastian Suerbaum

Prof. Dr. med. Sebastian Suerbaum is Professor and Chairman of Medical Microbiology and Hospital Epidemiology at the Max von Pettenkofer Institute for Hygiene and Medical Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU Munich). He earned his M.D. summa cum laude from Ruhr University Bochum in 1988, following studies there with semesters at the University of Vienna and clinical rotations at Harvard Medical School, and completed his habilitation in Medical Microbiology at the same institution in 1995. Suerbaum served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institut Pasteur in Paris from 1991 to 1993, funded by the German Research Foundation. His career includes research assistant and senior physician roles at Ruhr University Bochum (1989–1999), Associate Professor and Deputy Chairman at the Institute of Hygiene and Microbiology, University of Würzburg (1999–2003), and Full Professor and Director of the Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hospital Epidemiology at Hannover Medical School (2003–2016), prior to his appointment at LMU in 2017.

Suerbaum's research centers on bacterial pathogens of the gastrointestinal tract, particularly Helicobacter pylori, exploring genetic variability, host adaptation, evolution, and associations with human migration patterns through comparative genomics and experimental approaches. Key studies include evidence of H. pylori's African origin and migration traces aligning with human history (Linz et al., Nature, 2007; Falush et al., Science, 2003). His group also investigates Campylobacter jejuni genomes, Helicobacter hepaticus in inflammatory bowel disease, gastric and intestinal microbiota roles in health and disease, and Staphylococcus aureus fitness determinants. He directs the National Reference Center for Helicobacter pylori and chairs the Scientific Advisory Board of the Robert Koch Institute. Suerbaum previously presided over the German Society for Hygiene and Microbiology (2010–2014). Notable publications feature the review 'Helicobacter pylori infection' (Suerbaum and Michetti, New England Journal of Medicine, 2002), genome evolution during human infection (Kennemann et al., PNAS, 2011), and within-host evolution (Ailloud et al., Nature Communications, 2019). His contributions have advanced understanding of pathogen evolution and gastrointestinal infections. He is an elected member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (2011), Academia Europaea (2013), American Academy of Microbiology (2014), and European Academy of Microbiology (2016), with awards including the DFG Gerhard Hess Award (1996) and DGHM Main Award (2004).