Erwin F. Wagner

Erwin Friedrich Wagner (born 25 November 1950) is an Austrian biochemist known for his research on the molecular basis of cancer and associated conditions such as inflammation and cachexia. He was deputy director of the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) in Madrid, Spain, until 2019. Since 2019, Wagner is a group leader affiliated with the Medical University of Vienna.

Early life and education Erwin Wagner was born in Wolfsberg in the south of Austria. From 1974, he studied technical chemistry at the University of Graz, obtaining an engineering degree in 1974. In 1975, he worked in the lab of Fritz Paltauf on lipid chemistry.

During his PhD studies, Erwin Wagner joined the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin with a Max Planck Fellowship for one year in 1976. He then joined the lab of Manfred Schweiger at the University of Innsbruck in 1977. Wagner obtained his PhD with a thesis on "Regulation of gene expression after virus infection" in 1978.

Career

In 1979, Erwin Wagner began his postdoctoral research at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, United States in the laboratory of Beatrice Mintz as a Max Kade Fellow. Wagner's worked focused on the genetic control of mouse development working to develop techniques allowing the micro-injection of DNA into fertilized eggs as well as the development of gene transfer technologies into stem cells and mice.

In 1983, Wagner obtained a lecture qualification (Habilitation) by Innsbruck University and became a Group Leader at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany.

In 1988, Wagner was appointed senior scientist at the then newly founded Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna, Austria. Wagner was a founding member of the IMP. From 1997 until 2008, Wagner was appointed the Deputy Director of the IMP.

In 2008, Wagner left the IMP to become Deputy Director and Head of the Cancer Cell Biology Program at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) in Madrid, Spain.

Awards and achievements

EMBO Gold Medal (1990); Max Planck Research Prize (1993); Alois Sonnleitner Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (1995); Wittgenstein Award of the Austrian government (1996); Charles Rodolphe Brupbacher Award for Cancer Research (2003).

He was elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) in 1988; of the Academia Europaea in 1998; corresponding membership of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2005; He won two ERC Advanced Grants, one in 2009, one in 2017.