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Year of election: | 2009 |
Section: | Internal Medicine and Dermatology |
City: | Cologne |
Country: | Germany |
Thomas Benzing is Professor of Medicine and Chairman of the Department of Medicine II at the University of Cologne. Benzing received his MD and clinical training at the University of Freiburg, Germany. During his postdoctoral research at the Institute of Cardiovascular Physiology, University of Frankfurt and at Harvard Medical School, Boston, he focused on various aspects of signaling in kidney disease. Benzing was Heisenberg Fellow of the DFG, received offers from multiple universities including Harvard University, the University of Washington in Seattle and the UT Southwestern in Dallas and Full Professor of Medicine at the University of Freiburg. He was Vice-Chief of the Renal Division, University of Freiburg, and founding director of the Center for Systems Biology Freiburg. In 2007 Thomas Benzing and his team moved to Cologne where Benzing is Chairman of the Department of Medicine II and Director of the Kidney Research Center Cologne.
Thomas Benzing is a world leader in kidney research and has pioneered the field of molecular nephrology in various areas. His team is working at the forefront of the molecular understanding of the glomerular filtration barrier of the kidney and the pathogenesis of various cystic kidney diseases and renal cell carcinoma. He is editor of various top journals and cofounder of the Excellence Cluster on Cellular Stress Responses in Ageing-Associated Diseases at the University of Cologne.
Thomas Benzing was been awarded with the highest research awards and honors including the prestigious Young Investigator Award of the American Society of Nephrology, the Franz-Volhard Award and the highly recognized Ernst Jung Award in Medicine among many others.