Martin Hofmann-Apitius
Head of the Department of Bioinformatics at Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI)
Martin Hofmann-Apitius holds a PhD in Molecular Biology and worked for more than 10
years in experimental molecular biology. The screening for novel genes involved in tumour
metastasis lead him into the area of functional genomics and subsequently to applied
bioinformatics. Martin Hofmann-Apitius has experience in both, academic (University of
Heidelberg (ZMBH), Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (ITG), German Cancer Research Center
(DKFZ)) and industrial (BASF, Boehringer Ingelheim, LION bioscience AG) research. Since
2002 he is leading the Department of Bioinformatics at the Fraunhofer Institute for
Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI) in Sankt Augustin (Germany), a governmental
non-profit research institute. In July 2006 he has been appointed as a Professor for Applied
Life Science Informatics at Bonn-Aachen International Center for Information Technology
(B-IT).
Martin Hofmann-Apitius is (co-) author of more than 250 scientific publications. Major
scientific contributions were the cloning and identification of CD44v, the first gene that
mediates metastatic potential to tumour cells, the functional annotation of the mouse
transriptome, and information extraction methodology used for the semi-automated
generation of the first computable, knowledge-based model for Alzheimer´s Disease.
Martin Hofmann-Apitius was the academic initiator and co-coordinator of IMI-project
AETIONOMY, a project aimed at generating a mechanism-based taxonomy of
neurodegenerative diseases (see www.aetionomy.org). He was also involved in related IMI-
projects, such as EPAD (www.ep-ad.org), PHAGO (www.phago.eu) and RADAR-AD
(https://www.radar-ad.org). Recently, he was successful – as coordinator – with COMMUTE,
a project aiming at unravelling the co-morbidity mechanisms linking COVID-19 and
neurodegenerative diseases.
Current research activities at the Department of Bioinformatics at Fraunhofer SCAI focus on:
Automated methods for “text-2-knowledge graph” in indication-wide approaches
Integrative semantics, data- and knowledge-integration in precision medicine
Knowledge-based, mechanistic modelling of neurodegenerative diseases
Mining in real-world data (social networks, patient forums, electronic patient records)
Comparative progression models for neurodegerative and neuropsychiatric diseases
Longitudinal disease (risk) models in neurology and neuro-psychiatry
Martin Hofmann-Apitius is a strong advocate of scientific excellence in translational research.



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