Ulrike Protzer is an expert virologist with many years of research in molecular virology, virus-host interaction, and immunology. Ulrike studied medicine in Germany, South Africa, and Switzerland. She has a strong background in infectious diseases, hepatology, and medical virology, which she obtained during her clinical training. She has passed Internal Medicine, Microbiology, and Virology board exams.
Since the end of 2007, Ulrike Protzer has been director of the Institutes of Virology at Helmholtz Munich and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and holds the Chair of Virology. Focusing on promoting young scientists, she serves as vice dean of the School of Medicine.
2011-2018, she was a member of the founding executive board of the German Center for Infection Research. Currently, she leads several national and international research consortia and serves on numerous advisory and supervisory boards.
Her scientific efforts focus on understanding the interaction between viruses and their human hosts and translating this knowledge into novel (immune)therapeutic approaches. For many years, she has focused on the hepatitis B virus that kills more than 820,000 humans yearly. Her group exploits vaccines and T-cell therapies to reconstitute HBV-specific immunity with the clear goal to finally cure HBV. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she has also studied the immune response protecting from COVID-19 and performed clinical studies on the effect of vaccines on COVID-19 control.