Biography

Prof. Isabelle Bekeredjian-Ding is a physician specialized in medical microbiology and immunology with an executive MBA degree from Mannheim/ESSEC Business Schools. She attended Medical School in Heidelberg, Padova and Mt. Sinai, New York. After graduation and her doctorate in immunology she worked at the Großhadern Hospital in Munich, at the Baylor Institute for Immunology Research in Dallas and in clinical pharmacology at the University of Munich. In 2005, she moved to Heidelberg as research group leader at the Department for Infectious Diseases; in 2012, she joined the Institute of Medical Microbiology, Immunology and Parasitology (IMMIP) in Bonn as deputy medical director. From 2015-2023 she was head of the Division of Microbiology at the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut. She was responsible for approval of clinical trials, marketing authorizations for vaccines and the microbiological safety aspects of biomedicines and served in many offices including the EMA CHMP Vaccines Working Party and pandemic Task Force, Chair of the subgroup on infectious pathogens of the German Blood working group and chaired the Scientific Committee of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI2) from 2017-2021. In the pandemic, she became founding director of the Center for Pandemic Vaccines and Therapeutics (ZEPAI), a unit responsible for procurement, demand forecast, storage and distribution of COVID19 vaccines as well as pandemic preparedness contracts with vaccine manufacturers (2021-2023). Since 2024, she is full Professor and Chair of Medical Microbiology at Marburg University where she focusses her research on host-pathogen interaction, vaccine development and pandemic preparedness. Prof. Bekeredjian-Ding is a co-founder of the EU Vaccines Hub (Pillar 4 lead), an EU-funded program for end-to-end development program for pandemic vaccines (EU4Health GA #101202831), a member of WHO PDVAC and of the German Center for Infectious Disease Research (DZIF).