Austrian biomedical researcher specializing in molecular immunology. He is the scientific Director of the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology located at the Vienna Biocenter. In February 2018, he announced his decision to leave Vienna and become the head of the Life Sciences Institute of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He has led seminal studies on the identification of mechanisms leading to human disease, such as SARS-CoV-1 to SARS, or SARS-CoV-2 to  COVID-19.

He has published extensively in several multidisciplinary scientific journals, with over 60 publications in Cell, Nature, and Science. Furthermore, he has received numerous awards including the Wittgenstein Prize of the Austrian Federal Government, the Descartes Prize for Research, the Ernst Jung Prize for Medical Excellence, the Innovator Award of the US Department of Defense, and the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art First Class.