In April 2021, Kerstin Stemmer (Project P08) became W2 professor for Cellular Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Rudolf-Buchheim-Institute for Pharmacology at the Justus-Liebig University Gießen.
Prof. Stemmer studied biology and graduated in Human and Environmental Toxicology at the University of Konstanz, where she received the Nycomed award for the best PhD thesis in Biology in 2009. In parallel, she pursued advanced training to become Fachtoxikologin and European-registered toxicologist in 2011. Following two years of postdoctoral training at the University of Cincinnati in the United States, she became group leader in the Institute for Diabetes and Obesity of the Helmholtz Center in Munich. Her research was focused on the study of extracellular vesicles in metabolic disease and cancer, and on the development of incretin-based anti-obesity therapies. The latter was awarded with a shared Erwin-Schrödinger award by the Helmholtz society in 2014. With her Habilitation in Pharmacology and Toxicology in 2018, she became college lecturer at the University of Konstanz.
At her new position in Gießen, Prof. Stemmer - a mother of two - will continue her work on the etiology and pharmacology of metabolic disease and its comorbidities. Specifically, she aims to identify, and target, the molecular mechanisms that drive obesity diabetes type 2 related comorbidities of the pancreas, liver and kidney.