Till Strowig

M.Sc., Technical University of Berlin Of Mice and Men: Studying Innate and Adaptive Immunity against the Epstein-Barr Virus presented by Christian Münz

Mens sana in corpore sano. A healthy mind in a healthy body. This Latin proverb describes Till’s lifestyle, balancing intellectual challenge with his enthusiasm for sports. With his mind, Till has contributed to solving an essential problem in immunology, namely how one can study immune responses to pathogens that infect only humans. He has developed a mouse model, in which a functional human immune system develops from human blood stem cells. This allowed him to study human immune responses to the tumor virus Epstein-Barr virus in vivo, and will significantly change our design of preclinical studies for the treatment of human infectious diseases and cancers.

In parallel he has immersed himself in American sports. Being a fervent runner and marathon man, he has also followed baseball, basketball and American football intensely during the four years of his Ph.D. thesis. Like so many native New Yorkers, he has become a Yankees fan. Only the soccer World Cup 2006 in his home country Germany was able to briefly lure him back to European sports. I have no doubt that Till will continue to make his way, balancing science with sports, when he now continues his career in the immunobiology department of Yale University. Till, we look forward to many more exciting research results from you.