PANEL: How to Achieve Breakthroughs – in Science Communications, Science Startups and Early-stage Science Careers

Thomas Sattelberger: Starting 2021 until June 2022 he was Parliamentary State Secretary at the federal Ministry für Education and Research.  2017 until August 2022 he served as a Member of the German federal Parliament. He has resigned from all these positions For many years he was a member of the board of German DAX companies. From 2007 to 2012 he worked for Deutsche Telekom as Chief Human Resources Officer and from 2003 to 2007 for the automotive supplier Continental. Sattelberger joined Lufthansa in 1994 and  from 1999 until  2003 he served as Member of the divisional board of Lufthansa German Airlines responsible for Product and Service. Between 1975 and 1994, he worked in various management positions and divisions for the Daimler Group.

Dr. Anne Schreiter is the managing director of the German Scholars Organization e.V. (GSO). She studied social and business communication at the University of the Arts in Berlin and the Chinese language in Nanjing and Shanghai. Before joining GSO, Anne Schreiter developed programs for executives and led career workshops for doctoral students and postdocs. She received her doctorate in organizational sociology in St. Gallen and spent a year as a postdoc at the University of California at Berkeley.

Professor Dr. Eckart von Hirschhausen is a physician, science journalist and founder of Healthy Planet – Healthy People Foundation.

Dr Eckart von Hirschhausen studied medicine and science journalism in Berlin, London and Heidelberg. For more than twenty-five years, he has been on the road as a moderator, speaker and motivator on stages, podiums and on television. His speciality: conveying medical content in a humorous way and combining it with sustainable messages. Eckart von Hirschhausen is an honorary faculty member of the Berlin Charité and holds an honorary professorship at the Philipps University Marburg. Since 2018 he has been committed to a medically and scientifically based climate policy. He is co-founder of Scientists for Future and a supporter of the German Alliance on Climate Change and Health (KLUG).

In 2020, he founded the Healthy Planet – Healthy People Foundation, which aims to communicate in solution-oriented, humorous, understandable, inspiring, and visionary ways that the climate crisis presents a threat to the health of everybody across the globe. At the foundation, they take an interdisciplinary approach combining expertise in communication, politics, health, sustainability and development cooperation.

Prof. Riesner held the Chair of Biophysics at the Heinrich-Heine-University in Düsseldorf, Germany from 1980 to 2007. He has also held the positions of Dean of the Science Faculty and Vice-President of Research. In 2007 he became member of the university’s Board of Trustees. He worked as a research fellow at Princeton University and held a guest professorship at the department of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. Prof. Riesner is a co-founder of Qiagen N.V., Netherlands, was a member and from 1999 to 2014 chairman of the Supervisory Board. He was also a member of the supervisory boards of NewLab Bioquality AG, Erkrath, Direvo AG, Köln, and Alantos AG, Heidelberg. Prof. Riesner was a member of the scientific advisory boards of the Friedrich-Löffler-Institut, Isle of Riems, and PrioNet and APRI, both Canada. He received the Max-Planck Forschungspreis for International Co-operation and the Bundesverdienstkreuz 1. Klasse from the Bundespresident of Germany.

Dr. Katharina von Knop is the founder and CEO of Digital Trust Analytics GmbH. This service company builds trusted business models and optimizes the decision-making processes of Humans, Organizations, and AI machines. The company was founded based on her scientific work on the topic “Building Digital Trust”. She wrote her Ph.D. thesis on decision-making in security politics. After a period of applied research and the co-foundation of her first company, the Institute for Applied Computer Science, she changed to strategy consulting to optimize banks risk management during the financial crisis, and then to develop new digital business models in a leading position for a 60,000-strong group.

Her volunteer work includes being a Member of the Board Of Advisors at the German Scholar Organization and at the X-Health Data Loft, a Member of the Sounding Board at the Max Planck Academy, and a Mentor at the Startup IT-Accelerator CyberLab in Karlsruhe.