The award ceremony for the Alexander von Humboldt professorships took place in Berlin on May 15, 2012. One of the coveted positions went to Professor Matthias Tschöp, a leading international expert on metabolic diseases.
He heads the Institute of Diabetes and Obesity at Helmholtz Zentrum München and holds the chair of Diabetes Research / Insulin Resistance at Technische Universität München.

Professor Tschöp accepted the Alexander von Humboldt professorship at the official award ceremony in Berlin. He is the first medical doctor to receive the professorship, which is the most highly endowed international research award in Germany.

The award winner studied medicine at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, where he also completed his doctoral degree. Then he worked as a post-doc in an international pharmaceutical company in the U.S. After that he was a researcher at the German Institute of Human Nutrition in Potsdam, and then became professor and director of the Institute of Metabolic Diseases at the University of Cincinnati.
Tschöp is considered to be one of the world’s leading scientists in the field of the two metabolic diseases, diabetes and obesity. His focus is both on exploring the molecular signaling pathways that play a role in diabetes and insulin resistance, as well as on new preventive and therapeutic approaches.