Hasso-Plattner-Institut
Prof. Dr. Erwin Böttinger
 

06.09.2017

Press release

Professor Dr. Erwin Böttinger Becomes Head of the Digital Health Center

Erwin Böttinger, former CEO of the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), will become head of the Digital Health Center on October 1. At the faculty, which was founded jointly by the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) and the University of Potsdam, he will set up the new field of "Digital Health" and create a corresponding master’s degree program.

Professor Erwin Böttinger will be researching IT applications and data analyzes in the healthcare system with still to be appointed colleagues. (Photo: HPI / K. Herschelmann)

Erwin Böttinger has accepted the appointment for the first professorship of the newly founded Digital Engineering Faculty of HPI and the University of Potsdam, the largest and most research-intensive university in the state of Brandenburg, in October 2017. This marks the start of the expansion of the Potsdam digital engineering faculty. As a specialist in the field of digital health, Professor Böttinger will set up the new department and create a corresponding degree program.

"We are pleased to be able to gain this internationally renowned expert for the University of Potsdam," said University President Oliver Günther, PhD. "Professor Böttinger ideally complements our strengths in the field of digitalization. The appropriate interfaces to the Gesundheitscampus Brandenburg also exist."

Böttinger has acquired an international reputation in biomedical research. After studying medicine in Bavaria, he moved to the USA in 1987 and carried out research at the Harvard University Medical School in Boston and the National Cancer Institute. Before returning to Germany, he worked in New York City, where he founded the Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine at Mount Sinai. Most recently, he headed the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) in Berlin.

He looks forward to the new task in Potsdam: "The development of the groundbreaking Digital Health Center and Digital Health degree program at the joint Digital Engineering Faculty of the University of Potsdam and the Hasso Plattner Institute offers unique opportunities for the digital transformation of medicine at a top international level," says Böttinger. He is very pleased to accept the challenge awaiting him and his colleagues in Potsdam.

The dean of the new joint faculty of UP and HPI, Professor Dr. Christoph Meinel, laid the foundation for the negotiations. "With Professor Böttinger, we are gaining an internationally renowned top researcher for the new “Digital Health Center” who has outstanding contacts worldwide," says Meinel. Böttinger will develop and research state-of-the-art IT applications and data analysis in the health care system with other, yet to be appointed, colleagues. "Digitalization will fundamentally change healthcare and medicine. Thus, we aim to develop comprehensive expertise in the field of digital health and train the young professionals of tomorrow.”