Sarah Kim-Hellmuth

Sarah Kim-Hellmuth is a Physician-Scientist at the Dr. von Haunerschen Children’s hospital LMU Munich since 2020. She is interested in human genetic variation and its effects on cellular functions linked to immune-related diseases.

Dr. Kim-Hellmuth received her MD from the TU and LMU Munich. She was trained as a postdoctorate fellow in immunology and underwent her specialist training as a Clinical Geneticist at the University of Bonn. Combining her research interests both in immunology and human genetics Dr. Kim-Hellmuth pioneered the study of genetic effects on gene expression that influence the human immune response to pathogens. In 2015 she joined Tuuli Lappalainen at the New York Genome Center and Columbia University for a computational postdoctorate fellowship for which she received the research fellowship of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship from the European Commission. During her postdoc Dr. Kim-Hellmuth was a lead analyst in the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) Consortium where she co-lead the cell type composition analysis subgroup. She contributed to the characterization of the final GTEx release, which provides the most comprehensive public resource of tissue-specific gene expression and genetic regulation so far. In particular she focused on the context-specificity (tissue-, cell type-, sex-specificity) of QTLs and how they elucidate the molecular mechanisms of genetic associations to complex diseases and traits.

Dr. Kim-Hellmuth is presently leading a paediatric COVID-19 study investigating the interindividual immune response variation to SARS-CoV2 infections in children and young adults.