Professor Henning Walczak holds a dual position as Alexander-von-Humboldt Professor of Biochemistry at the Centre of Biochemistry & CECAD at the University of Cologne and Chair of the Centre for Cell Death, Cancer and Inflammation (CCCI) in the Cancer Institute, University College of London.
After completing his PhD in 1995 at the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ, Heidelberg, Germany), he worked as postdoctoral researcher at Immunex Corporation in Seattle (WA, USA). After returning to Europe in 1998, he became group leader at the DKFZ in 2000 following receipt of a BioFuture Prize awarded by the German Ministry for Science and Education. In October 2007, he was appointed as Chair of Tumour Immunology at Imperial College London. He joined UCL in January 2013. Research by the Walczak group has been funded through Programme grants from Cancer Research UK, the Wellcome Trust, MRC and ERC since 2008. In 2019, he was appointed as Alexander-von-Humboldt Professor of Biochemistry and Chair of the Institute of Biochemistry I of the Medical Faculty of the University of Cologne.
The Research group headed by Prof Walczak investigates cell death and ubiquitin in inflammation, immunity to infection, auto-immunity and cancer. A particular emphasis of the group’s work is on harnessing newly gained insight on the functional interplay between cell death, ubiquitin and inflammation regarding their role in tumour immunity.