Prof Dr Dr Luka Cicin-Sain

Born in Croatia, Luka Cicin-Sain studied medicine at the University of Rijeka, his hometown. In 1996, he earned a degree as MD, started his clinical internship and a master program in biomedicine. He passed the Croatian state exam for physicians and finished his master program in 2004. Meanwhile he worked at the Department of Histology and Embryology in Rijeka and at the Max von Pettenkofer Institute for Hygiene and Medical Microbiology in Munich and attained a PhD degree in 2006.  He moved as a postdoctoral fellow of the German Scientific Foundation (DFG) to the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute of the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, USA, where he subsequently became a research assistant professor. In 2010, he returned to Germany as to lead the junior research group "Immune Aging and Chronic Infections" at HZI. In 2016 he was tenured, in 2020 he became the speaker of the HZI Research Topic Immune Responses and Immune Interventions and in 2021 he became the chairperson of the Department "Viral Immunology" (VIRI) at the same institute. In 2020, he cofounded the work group Vaccines of the German Immunological Society, where he is still a co-coordinator. Since 2025, Cicin-Sain has held a full professorship (W3) at Hannover Medical School (MHH) and is a member of the Centre for Individualized Infection Medicine (CiiM), a joint venture of HZI and MHH since 2019. Since June 2026, Luka Cicin-Sain is a member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts.