Hosts
Prof. Dr. Markus Schwaiger
Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Prof. Schwaiger is President of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences since 2023.
As Professor Emeritus of Nuclear Medicine at the Department of Medicine of the Technical University of Munich (TUM), he is also member of the Senior Excellence Faculty. He served the Klinikum Rechts der Isar of TUM as Medical and Managing Director. He is also the Founding Director of TranslaTUM, the interdisciplinary central institute for translational cancer research at TUM and member of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
Prof. Schwaiger completed his medical studies at the University of Freiburg and Free University of Berlin. His career as a physician and researcher has taken him, among others, to the UCLA School of Medicine (Los Angeles, USA) and the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, USA), where he was Professor of Nuclear Medicine until 1993.
His research focuses on the use of multimodal imaging in cardiology and oncology to visualize and quantify biological processes. He has been leading a Collaborative Research Center funded by the German Research Foundation, which aims to develop methods for imaging tumor biology in order to select and monitor therapy in patients with cancer.
Prof. Dr. Thomas F. Hofmann
Technical University of Munich
Prof. Thomas F. Hofmann has been the President of TUM since 2019.
Following his studies in food chemistry at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, he obtained his doctorate in 1995 and completed his postdoctoral studies in 1998 in the Chemistry Department of the Technical University of Munich (TUM). In 1998, he was appointed Acting Director of the German Food Chemistry Research Institute and elected a member of the Leibniz Society.
After an appointment as professor and Director of the Food Chemistry Institute at Münster University in 2002, he returned to TUM in 2007 as a full professor in the Chair of Food Chemistry and Molecular Sensors. He is a member of the ZIEL Institute for Food and since 2015, Co-Director of the Bavarian Biomolecular Mass Spectrometry Center (BayBioMS).
Prof. Hofmann also successfully initiated the Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC) “EIT FOOD” of the European Institute of Technology (EIT) in 2016.
Peter Nobel
Nobel Sustainability Trust
Peter Nobel is chairman of the Nobel Sustainability Trust. He co-founded the Swedish clean tech company HeatCore AB, which operates in the energy efficiency sector. The company is developing and marketing a highly compact and efficient heat cell for applications in the global heating industry. He has over 25 years of experience in positioning companies for success and market share growth in various industrial markets. He held executive positions in sales and marketing, R&D, and manufacturing functions in global companies like Alfa Laval and SWEP International.
He has successfully been managing long sales cycles for industrial components for various global industry sectors and was instrumental in developing heat transfer products into exponential growth, resulting in a €500 million worldwide market.
Peter Nobel has a degree of Master of Science in Material Science and Engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and a degree in Business Administration from Lund University.
Moderator
Yang Lan
Chairperson of Sun Media Group
Yang Lan is a household name in China, as a leading broadcast journalist and mediaentrepreneur. She is the chairperson of Sun Media Group and Sun Culture Foundation. Her signature program Yang Lan One on One has interviewed more than 1200 movers and shapers around the world. She founded Her Village Media and Education Group, aplatform reaching tens of millions for women’s empowerment and gender equality.
She is the only person to have represented Beijing twice for its successful Olympic biddings. She was named as Goodwill Ambassador for 2010 Shanghai Expo. She is a Global Ambassador and International Board Member for the Special Olympics Movement and the vice-chairman of China Charity Alliance.
Ms. Yang was honored with many awards, including Columbia University SIPA’s “Global Leadership Award”, the “National Philanthropy Award”, “Women’s Achievement Award” by All-China Women’s Federation, “40 Returned Scholars in 40 Years of China’s Reform and Opening-up”, “70 Returned Scholars in 70 Years”, the Paley Center for Media and AOL’s “Makers” award. She is one of The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women by Forbes.