Manolis Pasparakis
Adjunct Researcher, ERA Chair IMBB-FORTH
Manolis Pasparakis is Professor of Genetics at the University of Cologne and a Principal Investigator at the Cologne Excellence Cluster for Aging Associated Diseases and the Center for Molecular Medicine. He is internationally recognized for his research on inflammation, regulated cell death, innate immunity and disease. His work focuses on understanding how cellular stress and danger signals activate immune pathways that regulate tissue homeostasis and drive inflammatory and degenerative diseases.
After studying Biology at the University of Athens, Prof. Pasparakis completed his PhD at the Hellenic Pasteur Institute and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Cologne. He subsequently established his own research group at the EMBL Mouse Biology Unit in Monterotondo before returning to Cologne as Professor of Genetics in 2005.
Prof. Pasparakis has published more than 210 scientific papers, which have received over 55,000 citations (h-index 109). His contributions have been recognized by numerous distinctions, including two ERC Advanced Grants, election to the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), and the 2023 CDD Jürg Tschopp Prize. He currently serves as Spokesperson of the Collaborative Research Centre CRC 1403 – Cell Death in Immunity, Inflammation and Disease.
Within this project, his research aims to define how endogenous danger signals arising from tissue stress, genome instability and cell death activate innate immune pathways to drive inflammation and disease. By combining genetic, molecular and systems-level approaches, his team seeks to identify fundamental mechanisms that can be exploited for the development of new therapies for inflammatory, autoimmune, neurodegenerative and malignant diseases.