The spokesperson of miTarget, Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Andre Franke (*1978), a molecular biologist and informatician by training, has published over 429 articles from 2005 until today and has an h-index of 87 (according to Scopus; cumulative impact factor >4743). He has been leading the highthroughput laboratories of the IKMB since 2008, including the DNA laboratory of the biobank at IKMB and PopGen, the genotyping platform (one of Germany’s largest academic platforms), and the bioinformatics/IT platform. Together with deputy speaker Prof. Dr. med. Philip Rosenstiel he is coordinating the Sequencing platform IKMB/ZMB that is now one of Germany’s main DFG NGS Centres (CCGA). Since 2012, he has been the speaker of the DFG-Research Training Group 1743 “Genes, Environment and Inflammation” and he has been leading the CAU Medical Faculty’s OMICS Clinical Data Management Programme since then. Applicant Franke has been and is actively involved in several EU (ReaDNA, ESGI, EASI-Genomics, SysCID) and BMBF (NGFN, e:Med) programs. He served on the Steering Committee of the DFG Excellence Cluster “Inflammation at Interfaces” (Phase I and II) and now within the Cluster “Precision Medicine in Chronic Inflammation” in which he is PI of the subprojects RTF-I for genetics, TI-2 for immunogenetics and the research data management project. For over 10 years he has been serving on the management committee (MC) of the International IBD Genetics Consortium (IIBDGC; https://www.ibdgenetics.org) that is currently steering two new large-scale flagship projects, a new mega-GWAS analysis and a whole-exome sequencing program. Since 2014, Franke has been active in microbiome research and established a microbiome laboratory at IKMB (see Fig. 6) that currently has 1 leader (associated scientist Bang), 2.5 technicians, and 3 bioinformaticians (2 postdocs, 1 PhD student). For the 4th time in a row (since 2016) he is co-organizing the Berchtesgaden Microbiome Science Days 2019 together with co-speaker Rosenstiel, an international high-class microbiome meeting.

Participating Institutes