1. Current Status, Position

Winfried V. Kern, MD, is Professor of Medicine at the Albert-Ludwigs-University, Freiburg, and Head, Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, and Centre for Infectious Diseases and Travel Medicine, University Hospital, Freiburg, Germany. He is president of the German Society for Infectious Diseases (DGI), speaker of the DGI section “Antibiotic Stewardship”, co-editor of the first German Antibiotic Use and Resistance Atlas (“GERMAP2008”), and member of the Drugs & Therapeutics Committee of the Federal Chamber of Physicians.

2. Education

Dr. Kern was trained in Bordeaux, France, and in Erlangen-Nuremberg and Heidelberg, Germany. He received his MD degree from the Karl-Ruprechts-University, Heidelberg, Germany. He completed postgraduate training, residency and fellowships (internal medicine, clinical microbiology, tropical hygiene, infectious diseases, clinical immunology) in Heidelberg, Ulm, and Tübingen, Germany, and in Providence, RI, and San Francisco, CA, USA.

3. Research Area

He has worked within the EORTC Infectious Disease Group on clinical trials in cancer patients with infection. His professional interests include antibiotic resistance epidemiology, bacterial multidrug resistance mechanisms, hospital antibiotic stewardship programmes, healthcare-associated infections including infections in the immunocompromised host. He is member of the Executive Board of the Freiburg Treatment and Research Centre for Chronic Immunodeficiency and of the Paediatric Pharmacy Advocacy Group (PPAG) of which he is the past chief operating officer. He received his bachelor of pharmacy degree from Temple University and his Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Kentucky in the USA.