Human geneticist Stefan Mundlos appointed External Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics

Already since 2000, Stefan Mundlos heads a research group at the MPIMG, focusing on the identification and characterization of genes causing congenital malformations, especially of the skeletal system. The group is closely linked with the Institute for Medical Genetics and Human Genetics of the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, thus allowing an ideal combination of basic research and clinical-translational research. This applies especially to the identification of causal genetic mutations using state-of-the-art technology for genome analyses of patients with malformations as well as to the investigation of disease-causing processes in model systems.

The Institute of Medical Genetics and Human Genetics offers full clinical and diagnostic services and advice on genetic disorders to individual patients and families. It aims at improving the understanding of the causes and the pathology of genetic disorders and, in particular, to uncover the molecular causes of congenital malformations and the regulatory mechanisms behind them.

The Research Group "Development & Disease" deals with fundamental questions of normal and pathological development and tries to understand, how mutations of the genome can cause disease, with a special focus on developmental defects. Currently, the group is concentrating on basic control mechanisms of gene regulation during development. Starting with mutations that cause malformations in affected patients, the scientists analyze how these mutations disturb regulatory processes of the genome.

"We are very excited that the Max Planck Society has followed our proposal to appoint Stefan Mundlos as External Scientific Member of the Institute”, says Bernhard Herrmann, managing director of the MPIMG. “Thus, the MPG recognizes Mundlos’ outstanding scientific achievements of the recent years and encourages him and the institute to continue our joint efforts in the future."

About Stefan Mundlos

Stefan Mundlos was born in Marburg an der Lahn, Germany, in 1958. He studied Medicine at the Universities of Marburg, Göttingen, and Heidelberg and got his approval (“Approbation”) as physician in 1985. Following his PhD and a clinical training and Board Certification in Pediatrics, he spent a year as a research fellow in Melbourne, Australia, followed by a postdoc period at the Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA. Back in Germany, he received his habilitation in 1997 and the Board Certification in Human Genetics in 1998. In 2000, he was appointed director of the Institute for Medical Genetics and Human Genetics at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and head of the research group “Development & Disease” at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin. He was appointed as External Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics by the Senate of the MPG in 2017.