Federal Chancellery appoints BIPS Director to the "Health and Resilience" Expert Council

The new Expert Council met for its first constituent meeting today. It is the successor body to the Corona Expert Council, which met for the last time in April 2023. The 23 members will address the question of how the healthcare system and society can best tackle future health crises on a scientific basis. The Expert Council can advise the federal government on current public health issues on an ad hoc basis.

The committee is made up of researchers from various disciplines, including public health, epidemiology, ethics, medicine, modeling, nursing science, psychology, social sciences, virology, computer science, statistics and data processing and modeling. The members work on a voluntary and independent basis. The committee is chaired by Professor Heyo Kroemer, Chairman of the Board of Charité. The co-chair is Professor Susanne Moebus from the University Medical Center Essen. "We need a broad-based council of experts to be able to counter future health crises in the best possible way. One lesson from the pandemic is that we need to make our healthcare system more resilient and robust - also with regard to the consequences of climate change and demographic developments. I would like to thank all members for their willingness to contribute to this task for the future," said Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

About Iris Pigeot

Professor Iris Pigeot has been Director of what is now the Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology - BIPS since March 2004 and has headed the Biometry and IT Department there since 2001. After various research and teaching positions, including at ETH Zurich (Switzerland) and LMU Munich, she accepted a professorship for "Statistics with a focus on Biometry and Methods of Epidemiology" at the University of Bremen in September 2001. Her research interests include digital public health, statistical methods and data protection issues in connection with data sharing, distributed data analysis, record linkage and the development of research data infrastructures. She was awarded the "Susanne Dahms Medal for Special Merit in Biometrics" by the German Region of the International Biometric Society (IBS-DR) in 2010 and has been President of the International Biometric Society since January 2024.

BIPS - health research in the service of people

The population is at the center of our research. As an epidemiological research institute, we see it as our task to identify the causes of health disorders and develop new concepts for the prevention of diseases. Our research provides the basis for social decisions. It informs the population about health risks and contributes to a healthy living environment.

BIPS is a member of the Leibniz Association, which comprises 97 independent research institutes. The focus of the Leibniz Institutes ranges from the natural, engineering and environmental sciences to economics, spatial and social sciences and the humanities. Leibniz Institutes are dedicated to socially, economically and ecologically relevant issues. Due to their national importance, the federal and state governments jointly fund the institutes of the Leibniz Association. The Leibniz Institutes employ around 20,000 people, including 10,000 scientists. The total budget of the institutes is more than 1.9 billion euros.