Georg Schett

Professor Schett graduated from the University of Innsbruck (Austria) in 1994. After graduation as MD, he worked as scientist at the Institute of Biomedical Aging Research of the Austrian Academy of Science in Innsbruck. Thereafter he joined the Medical University of Vienna, where he completed his postgraduate training in Internal Medicine and subsequently in Rheumatology. In 2003 he was promoted to Professor of Internal Medicine at the Medical University of Vienna. In 2004, he worked as a scientist at Amgen Inc. in Thousand Oaks, CA. He was appointed as Full Professor of Medicine and Department Head of Internal Medicine 3 (Rheumatology & Immunology) at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany) in 2006. In 2021, Prof. Schett was appointed Vice President for Research at the Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nürnberg and became a member of the Leopoldina, the German National Academy of Sciences.

Georg Schett’s scientific work is dedicated to understand the molecular basics of immune-inflammatory diseases. Initially, he investigated the immunology of atherosclerosis and focused on antibody-mediated endothelial cell damage. His research work led to the understanding of the pathogenesis of lupus and arthritis. He was awarded the renowned START Award in 2002 and established a research group for arthritis in Vienna. In 2008, he initiated in collaboration with colleagues the priority program IMMUNOBONEin Germany, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) to elucidate the interactions between the skeletal and the immune systems. Since 2015, Prof. Schett has led the DFG collaborative research center 1181 “Checkpoints for Resolution of Inflammation” in Erlangen. In 2021, he pioneered the treatment of autoimmune diseases by chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cells and T-cell engagers.

The work of Georg Schett has been honored with several awards and grants, such as an ERC synergy grant of the European Union, the Carol-Nachman Award from city of Wiesbaden and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the DFG. Georg Schett has published over 1000 peer-reviewed papers, has been selected by Clarivate in the list of worlds highly cited researchers in the last 5 years and has been chosen by Time Magazine as one of the top 100 most influential people in Health in 2024.