Henning Walczak

Henning Walczak is an Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Biochemistry at the Medical Faculty, University of Cologne. Henning defended his Ph.D. thesis at the University of Bielefeld for thesis work performed at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg. He then did his postdoctoral training at the DKFZ and Immunex Corp. in Seattle before coming back to DKFZ, where he was a group leader from 1998 until 2007 when he got a professorship position first at the Imperial College London and then as the Head of the Department of Cancer Biology at the University College London Cancer Institute until 2019, when he assumed his current position.

Henning is a very productive researcher with over 40.000 citations. For his work, he received multiple awards, such as the BioFuture Prize of the German Ministry of Education and Science, the ERC Advanced Grant, the Wellcome Trust Investigator Award, and the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship Prize. Henning is also an ERC Consolidator Grants Life Sciences 4 Panel member.

Henning's research is focused on studying the functional interplay between cell death, ubiquitin, and inflammation in immunity, autoimmune and infectious diseases, and cancer, with a specific focus on tumor immunology. The group is particularly interested in clarifying the roles of different death receptor–ligand systems, their signaling processes, and understanding how these signaling processes and their perturbation can drive cancer, autoimmunity, and the pathologic consequences of infection. By better understanding this functional interplay, the Walczak lab aims to devise novel therapies for these diseases.