Prof. Dr. Thomas Illig, deputy spokesperson of the German Biobank Alliance (GBA) and head of the Hannover Unified Biobank (HUB), placed second in the Laborjournal ranking of the most cited researchers for the discipline of hormone and metabolism research. Between 2008 and 2017, he published 366 articles and was cited 39,945 times. The Laborjournal ranking (09/2019) considers articles with at least one author with an address in the German-speaking area – particularly specialist journals on hormone and metabolism research and employees working at institutes specialising in this field.
Thomas Illig studied at the University of Regensburg where he also completed his doctorate within the Department of Cell Biology. He then worked at the Helmholtz Zentrum München research centre in Munich as a postdoc for five years. Illig was appointed group leader of the Molecular Epidemiology working group at the Institute for Epidemiology in 2001 and took over as head of the independent Molecular Epidemiology research unit at the Helmholtz Zentrum München in 2011. He has been scientific head of the Hannover Unified Biobank (HUB) at Hannover Medical School (MHH) since 2012 and deputy head and research coordinator of the Institute for Human Genetics at the MHH since 2016.
Thomas Illig is a leading figure in German biobanking. In 2018, he assumed the position of deputy spokesman of the GBA, working closely with national coordinator Prof. Dr. Michael Hummel in this role, and significantly influencing the strategic direction of the biobank alliance.
