Klaus Gerwert graduated in physics in Münster and received his doctorate in biophysical chemistry in Freiburg. After postdoc at the Max Planck Institute in Dortmund and Heisenberg fellow (DFG) at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, USA, he became 36-year-old Professor and Chair of the biophysics department at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB). He founded the SFB 642 and chaired it from 2004-2016. He was a Fellow of the Max Planck Society 2009-2017 and external director at the Max Planck Partner Institute in Shanghai 2009-2014. Currently, since 2019, he is founding and executive director of PRODI, a federal/state-funded research center for protein diagnostics at RUB. In mid-2020, Klaus Gerwert founded the betaSENSE GmbH as a spin-off of Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Since then, he has also been CEO of betaSENSE.
Gerwert is actively advancing the development and application of time-resolved infrared difference spectroscopy in protein research in over 260 publications with over 15,000 citations and several patents. He is internationally recognized for his pioneering studies on protein reaction mechanisms, especially for his discovery of the catalytic role of internal water molecules in protein function. Recently, he invented quantum cascade laser-based IR imaging of cancer and brain tissue in combination with AI as a “label-free digital pathology” approach.
His current focus is on translation of the immuno-IR sensor he invented into the clinic. This approach uses the degree of misfolding of a biomarker as a measure instead of its concentration. As a result, the risk of symptom-free individuals progressing to a clinical stage of Alzheimer’s can be determined in advance with a simple blood test. This sensor measures the degree of misfolding of a biomarker instead of its concentration, enabling novel stratification of high-risk individuals for neurodegenerative diseases and personalized therapy. In September 2023, Klaus Gerwert was honored with the Innovation Award of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia for the development of the immuno-IR sensor.
Publications: Over 260 publications in peer-reviewed journals
h-index: 70 (according to google scholar)
Citations: over 15,000