Björn Schumacher

Since 2013, Björn Schumacher is full professor and director of the Institute for Genome Stability in Aging and Diseases (IGSAD) and since 2026 scientific coordinator of the Cologne Excellence Cluster on Aging and Aging-Associated Diseases (CECAD) at the University of Cologne. He received his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Munich and conducted his postdoctoral research as EMBO and Marie Curie fellow at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam. Professor Schumacher is President of the German Society for DNA Repair (DGDR), co-Director of the Minerva Center of the Biological Mechanisms of Healthy Aging at Bar-Ilan University (IL), and between 2014 and 2020 served as President of the German Society for Aging Research (DGfA). Since 2023, Schumacher is speaker of the DFG Research Unit FOR 5504 on “Physiological causes and consequences of genome instability” and, since 2025, holds the ERA Chair in the Research and Innovation Program of Excellence on Aging and Longevity at the University of Crete, Greece. He was awarded with the Eva Luise Köhler Research Prize, the Innovation Prize of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the DFG Reinhart Koselleck and European Research Council (ERC) grants, coordinated the Marie Curie initial training network on chronic DNA damage in aging (CodeAge) and served on several editorial boards. His research interest focuses on the molecular mechanisms through which DNA damage contributes to cancer development and aging-associated diseases. Employing the C. elegans system and mammalian disease models, his group uncovered cell-autonomous and systemic responses through which the organism adapts to accumulating DNA damage with aging. Through the understanding of the basic mechanisms of genome instability-driven aging, Schumacher aims to contribute to the development of future strategies to prevent aging-associated diseases.