Wiendl, Heinz

Professor of Neurology
Chair of the Department of Neurology with Institute of Translational Neurology
University Hospital of Muenster
Muenster | Germany

Heinz Wiendl is professor of Neurology and chair of the Department of Neurology at the University Hospital of Muenster. He acted as dean for research and young academics of the medical faculty Muenster, and asrepresentative of the academia in the University clinic’s board of directors. His research is dedicated to understand immune regulation and the functional interaction between the immune and the nervous system. Within this he focusses on immuneregulation in MS and autoimmune nervous system disorders, inflammatory mechanisms of neurodegenation, biomarkers and biosignatures related to neuroinflammatory diseases, and immune therapy and its adverse effects.

Prof. Wiendl studied medicine in Germany, Switzerland and USA. He has been a research fellow at the Institute of Neuroanatomy at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and at the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology (Martinsried). Heinz Wiendl worked as a clinical and research fellow at the Department of Neurology Tuebingen, where he was awarded as a junior group leader for neuroimmunology, received his board certification and completed his habilitation. He was appointed as a professor of neurology and head of the clinical research group for MS and neuroimmunology in Wuerzburg in 2005 and acted as a vice-chair of the Department of Neurology. In 2010 he was recruited to the University of Muenster, where he accepted the position as a director of the Department of Neurology – Inflammatory Diseases of the Nervous System and Neurooncology after turning down parallel offers. Since 1st May 2013 he is director of the Department of Neurology in Muenster.

Heinz Wiendl is founding speaker of the national German Competence Network of MS (KKNMS; 2009 to 2012), and acts as a speaker since 2019. In addition he is speaker of the comprehensive research center CRC TR 128 “Multiple Sclerosis” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and steering committee member of the Muenster excellence cluster “Cells in Motion” (CiM). He is principal investigator of the cluster of excellence “Cells in Motion” (funded by the DFG and the German Council of Science and Humanities (WR)) since 1st August 2013. In 2016 Prof. Wiendl was appointed representative of the academia in the Board of directors of the University Hospital Muenster (UKM). He is member of several boards, advisory and expert committees such as the executive board of the advisory board of the German MS patient organization (DMSG), the scientific advisory committees for the International Conferences on HLA-G and the German Society for Muscular Diseases (DGM), member of the Multiple Sclerosis Therapy Consensus Group (MSTCG) and the executive board of the German Neurologists Council (BDN). Since 2017 he is honorary professor at the Sydney university medical school. He is the founding director of the Münster Body&Brain Institute, a research building dedicated to translational research in neuro-psychiatric disorders and funded by the German ministery.

Prof. Wiendl acts as reviewer of various scientific journals and national as well as international funding and non-profit organizations. Recently he has been appointed member of the expert committee on neurosciences at the DFG. His scientific achievements have been recognized by the Felix Jerusalem award of the DGM (2003), the Heinrich Pette award of the German Neurological Society (DGN, 2009), the Sobek junior (2005) as well as the senior award (20015) for MS research of the DMSG. His research and clinical activities are reflected by more around 600 publications in peer reviewed journals, multiple book chapters, the treatment guidelines for myasthenia gravis, myositis syndromes and multiple sclerosis and five edited books.