ProfJochen Prehn

Jochen Prehn has been Professor and Chairman, of the Department of Physiology and Medical Physics, at RCSI since 2003 and is Director of the Centre for Systems Medicine (CSM). His undergraduate degree was received in 1989 from the Faculty of Pharmacy, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University Bonn, Germany. He continued his studies in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, at Philipps-University Marburg, Germany and graduated his Ph.D. summa cum laude in 1992.
He started his postdoctoral studies in the same department before moving to take up the position of German Research Foundation (DFG) Fellow in the Department of Pharmacological and Physiological Sciences at the University of Chicago, USA. Prof. Prehn was a Lecturer/Assistant Professor (C1) in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Philipps University Marburg, Germany from 1995 until 1997 and then received a prestigious award from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research to head a Junior Research Group 'Apoptosis and Cell Death' at the Interdisciplinary Center for Clinical Research (IZKF), Faculty of Medicine, Westphalian Wilhelms-University Munster, Germany from 1998 until 2002. He was then appointed Professor of Experimental Neurosurgery (C3), in the Centre for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Clinics, Frankfurt, Germany in 2002 until he moved to RCSI Dublin Ireland in 2003.
Prof. Prehn was the first recipient of the Science Foundation Ireland Fellows-Research Professorship award in 2003 and is considered an international authority on the single-cell analysis and the molecular control of nerve cell death. Prof. Prehns research interests include: - Neuronal apoptosis and neuronal excitotoxicity- Disease mechanisms, diagnostics, and therapeutics for motoneuron disorders and ischaemic brain injury - Role of mitochondria and cellular bioenergetics in nerve cell death and as a new target for the treatment of cancer and diabetes - ER stress and proteasomal stress - Bcl-2 family proteins and BH3 only proteins in apoptotic signaling and cell physiology- Real time single cell imaging, real time detection of protein dynamics and protein interactions - Computational analysis of apoptotic signaling cascades- Delivery of predictive in silico tools for cancer therapeutics and neurotherapeutics. Prof. Prehn has acquired > €30 M in research funding as Principal Investigator including three SFI Investigator Awards and a HRB Translational Research award (€1.4 M APO-COLON) and he has been coordinator of EU projects including the FP7 Systems Medicine APO-DECIDE consortium. Prof. Prehn has been supervising undergraduates in physiology, pharmacology, neuroscience and cancer biology for over 15 years and has supervised over 22 PhD students and 6 MD students to completion.
Prof. Prehn has an impressive record of publication in high-ranking scientific journals, and has published over 150 peer-reviewed publications including publications in J Neurosci, EMBO J, Mol Syst Biol, Nature Genetics, Proc Natl Acad Sci USA and J Cell Biol (h-index 61; > 12,960 citations) reflecting the high productivity of his research group. Furthermore he has been an invited speaker at over 90 international scientific meetings including Keystone, Gordon Conferences, NIH, Max-Planck.