On 18 September 2014, Prof. Dr. Jörg Hacker was re-elected as president of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in a secret written vote by the Leopoldina Senate. On 1 March 2015 he will begin his second five-year term as the head of the academy. Before being elected academy president, Jörg Hacker was the Director of the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin. From 2003 to 2009 he was the Vice President of the German Research Foundation. In the past year Hacker was appointed to the UN Secretary General’s Scientific Advisory Board, which confers with the General Secretary of the United Nations on scientific matters.

Jörg Hacker was born in Grevesmühlen / Mecklenburg in 1952. From 1970 to 1974 he studied biology with an emphasis on genetics and microbiology at Martin Luther University in Halle (Saale). After receiving his PhD in 1979 and completing habilitation at the Institute for Microbiology at the University of Würzburg in 1986, Jörg Hacker became Professor of Microbiology at Würzburg starting in 1988. In 1993 he was appointed Director of Würzburg’s Institute for Molecular Infection Biology. Jörg Hacker has also done extensive work outside of Germany including two six-month research projects at the Institut Pasteur in Paris in 2000 and 2005. In 2006, he also accepted a position as guest professor at Tel Aviv University (Israel) as a Fellow of the „Sackler Institute for Advanced Studies“. Jörg Hackler has been a member of the Leopoldina since 1998.
 
Also re-elected as one of the four Vice Presidents was Prof. Dr. Martin J. Lohse, Professor of Pharmacology und Toxicology at the University of Würzburg. Prof. Dr. Martin Quack, Professor of Physical Chemistry at the ETH Zürich (Switzerland) became a new addition to the Presidium by virtue of assuming the role of the representative of the Swiss Academy members. He replaces the Swiss pathologist Prof. Dr. Philipp U. Heitz, who after two terms did not stand for re-election. Heitz had also held the position of Secretary of Class III (Life Sciences). The Leopoldina Senate elected Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Zenner, Director of the University of Tübingen´s Otolaryngology Clinic, as the successor for that position.

The pharmacologist Martin J. Lohse (born 1956) has been a member of the Leopoldina since 2000 and is part of the Physiology and Pharmacology/Toxicology Section. He has been the Chair holder for Pharmacology at the University of Würzburg since 1993 and the spokesperson for the „Rudolf-Virchow-Zentrum“ section of the DFG (German Research Foundation) Research Centre for Experimental Biomedicine at the University of Würzburg since 2001.

The chemist Martin Quack (born 1948) has been a member of the Leopoldina since 1998; he is active in  the Chemistry Section. In 1983 he was appointed Professor of Physical Chemistry at the ETH Zurich (university). From 2011 to 2012 Quack was the chairman of the German Bunsen Society for Physical Chemistry.

The physician Hans-Peter Zenner (born 1947) was appointed as a member of the Leopoldina in 1998 and is part of the Ophthalmology, Oto-Rhino-Laryngology and Stomatology Section. He has been the Director of the University of Tübingen´s Otolaryngology Clinic since 1988. Hans-Peter Zenner has been a member of the Presidium since as early as 2010.

The Annual Assembly of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina opens today in Rostock. The theme of the conference is „Wahrnehmen und Steuern – Sensorsysteme in Biologie und Technik“ (Perception and Control – Sensory Systems in Biology and Engineering). An interdisciplinary group of approximately 200 participants examine sensory organs and their engineering counterparts, i.e. sensors.

“The Annual Assembly´s theme `Perception and Control´ integrates and utilizes the complete range of the Leopoldina members´ diverse academic disciplines. The program committee under Prof. Dr. Rudolf F. Guthoff, Director of the University Eye Clinic at the University of Rostock, has succeeded in recruiting renowned scientists for all 17 of the Annual Assembly´s lectures,” observed Leopoldina President Hacker. This group of experts includes the Nobel Laureate for Medicine Prof. Dr. Bruce Beutler („Sensing Microbes and Responding to them – a Forward Genetic Approach in Mammals“); the medical ethicist Prof. Dr. Carl Friedrich Gethmann („Die Grenzen des menschlichen Wahrnehmungsraumes und ihre Überwindung“ / The Boundaries of Human Space of Perception and their Technical Overcoming); and the Leibniz Prize winner Prof. Dr. Gerd Hirzinger („Humanoide Roboter – die komplexen Sensor-Aktor-Systeme der Zukunft” / Humanoid Robots – the Complex Sensor-Actuator Systems of the Future).

On the occasion of the Annual Assembly, the Leopoldina, in conjunction with the Commerzbank Foundation, has conferred the Early Career Award on the young biochemist Dr. Carsten Grashoff. In addition, the Academy´s Medal of Merit was awarded to the Swiss pathologist Prof. Dr. Philipp U. Heitz.