Mathias Pletz

Mathias, Professor for Infectious Diseases, is a board-certified physician for internal medicine, pulmonology, infectious diseases, and hospital epidemiology, and the Head of the Institute for Infectious Diseases and Infection Control of the University Hospital in Jena (Germany). He also leads a clinical research group focusing on novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies against MDR bacterial pathogens, funded by the German Ministry for Science and Education.
Mathias Pletz received his Ph.D. in Virology at the University of Leipzig (Germany). During his thesis, he worked as a guest researcher at the Food and Drug Administration Laboratory of Parasitic Pathology and Biochemistry (Bethesda, MD, USA). After his medical training at the University of Leipzig, Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, TX, USA), and the University of Basel (Switzerland), he started his residency at the Chest Hospital in Berlin (Germany). Subsequently, he spent 2 years as a postdoctoral researcher at Emory University (Atlanta, GA, USA) working with Keith Klugman’s group on the spread of multiresistant pneumococci. In addition, he served as a guest researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, exploring the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemics. After his return to Germany, he finished his medical training at the Dept of Respiratory Medicine at the Hannover Medical School.
Mathias Pletz is the Deputy Director of the German Competence Network for Community-Acquired Pneumonia (CAPNETZ), a member of the Board of Directors of the German Society for Infectious Diseases (DGI), and the German Sepsis Society. Furthermore, he acts as a scientific advisor for the German Robert Koch Institute and a member of the review board of the German Research Foundation and the Swiss National Research Foundation. He has published more than 200 papers on sepsis, pneumonia, pneumococcal vaccines, respiratory infections, antimicrobial resistance, and pharmacokinetics of antibiotics in the critically ill.
He has also received numerous scientific awards, e.g. the Honor Award Certificate from the CDC, the Kass Award of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the Respiratory Infections Awards from the European Respiratory Society.