Biography

Markus M. Lerch is a professor of medicine, physician-in-chief and CEO of LMU University Hospital in Munich, one of Europe’s leading institutions for medical research, education and patient care.

He grew up in the Rhineland and majored in Philosophy and Art History before attending Medical School in Freiburg, Glasgow, Toronto and at the University of Massachusetts. In 1984 he completed his MD in Freiburg with experiments using isolated pancreatic lobules, his first exposure to the pancreas field. After a Pathology Internship in Freiburg he completed a residency in Internal Medicine at the Technical University of Aachen. Supported by the German Research Council (DFG) he worked as a post doc at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, interrupted by training in cell biology at the university of Milano, Italy, and followed by a faculty appointment at Harvard. On his return to Germany in 1992 he was board certified in Gastroenterology and obtained a second doctorate from the University of Ulm (Habiliation, D.Sc. equivalent) for work on the cell biology of pancreatitis, and was promoted to reader and clinical consultant. In 1994 he moved to the Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry and the lab of Axel Ullrich in Munich as a staff scientist and was later board certified in Biochemistry. From 1996 he worked as an assistant professor and consultant gastroenterologist in Homburg (Saar), and as tenured associate professor at the University of Münster (1997-2003) before he accepted a full professorship at the University of Greifswald (founded in 1456), where he served as chairman of the Department of Medicine A and Vice Dean for Research and Clinical Affairs until 2020 and where he maintains an adjunct position.