Rate My Professor Verena Dirsch

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Verena M. Dirsch serves as University Professor of Pharmacognosy and Vice-Head of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Vienna. She completed her studies in Pharmacy at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München from 1984 to 1989, obtaining her approbation as an apothecary in 1990. In 1993, she earned her doctoral degree (Dr. rer. nat. summa cum laude) in phytochemistry under Prof. H. Wagner at the same university. Dirsch conducted a postdoctoral fellowship funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) from 1994 to 1995 at Columbia University, New York, focusing on natural product chemistry in Prof. K. Nakanishi's group. Her early career at the University of Munich included positions as research associate at the Institute of Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmacy (1995-1998), scientific assistant at the Department of Pharmacy (1998-2004), and Privatdozentin from 2003. She received her habilitation and venia legendi in Pharmaceutical Biology and Pharmacology in 2002/2003.

Since October 2004, Dirsch has been Professor of Pharmacognosy at the University of Vienna, where she became Head of the Department (now Division) of Pharmacognosy in 2006, Speaker of the Faculty Research Focus 'Drug Discovery from Nature' (2005-2021) and 'Biomolecules for a Healthy Lifespan' from 2022, Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences (2008-2014), Speaker of the Center of Pharmaceutical Sciences (2020), and Vice-Head of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences since March 2021. Her research centers on natural product pharmacology, investigating molecular mechanisms of natural substances for drug discovery, including targets like nuclear receptors, PDE4 inhibitors, and biomolecules for healthy lifespan management. Dirsch has published over 212 works, including 'Heterologous Expression and CRISPR/Cas9-Assisted Manipulation of the Hybrid Gene Cluster Specifying the Biosynthesis of Meroterpenoids and Phenazines' (ACS Synthetic Biology, 2026), 'Evodiamine induces centrosome amplification with subsequent G2/M cell cycle arrest in primary vascular smooth muscle cells' (Biochemical Pharmacology, 2025), and 'Biochemometric 2D NMR-Based Heterocovariance Analysis: A Targeted Approach for Identifying Bioactive Compounds in Complex Mixtures' (Analytical Chemistry, 2025). Her contributions have earned awards such as the PHOENIX Pharmazie-Wissenschaftspreis (1998 in Pharmacology, 2011 in Pharmaceutical Biology), Präventionspreis der Deutschen Herzhilfe (1997), KIWIE-Silver Medal (2011), and Schwabe Phytoforschungspreis (2024).