Scientific Advisory Board

Matthias Hans Tschöp, M.D. is president of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich) and an internationally recognized physician-scientist and academic leader. He studied medicine and completed his doctorate at LMU Munich and gained research experience at Eli Lilly and Company in Indianapolis from 1999 to 2002. He subsequently established his own laboratory at the German Institute of Human Nutrition in Potsdam from 2002 to 2003.

In 2003, he was appointed research director and endowed chair of medicine at the University of Cincinnati. In 2011, he returned to Germany, where he served as founding director of the Helmholtz Munich Diabetes Center and the Helmholtz Pioneer Campus. In 2018, he assumed strategic leadership of Helmholtz Munich as Chief Executive Officer and scientific director, serving in that role until 2025. He also served as Vice President of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers from 2023 to 2024 and held the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship.

For more than three decades, he has worked across biomedical discovery, drug development, translational medicine and large-scale scientific leadership. His research on gut-brain signaling, including the characterization of the hormone ghrelin, contributed, together with Richard DiMarchi to the development of multi-hormone therapeutics capable of normalizing body weight and improving type 2 diabetes.

He has received numerous international honors, including the Rolf Luft Award, the Banting Medal, the Heinrich Wieland Prize and the Schering Prize. He is an elected member of the European, German, Bavarian and Austrian academies of sciences, as well as the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians.