Thomas B. Brunner, MD, Ph.D. Magdeburg, Germany
Thomas B. Brunner is the director of the Department for Radiation Therapy at the Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg, Germany which is situated 150 km / 90 miles west of Berlin. He studied medicine in Erlangen until 1995 including an ERASMUS year at the Université de Haute Bretagne in Rennes, France. He then took up an activity in radiotherapy at the University of Erlangen. With a DFG grant, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the US from 2001 onwards at the Department of Radiation Oncology of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he studied molecular mechanisms of radiation sensitivity of pancreatic cancer. After returning to the University of Erlangen in 2004, he passed his board certification for radiotherapy and he earned his habilitation, a German PhD-like qualification, in 2005. From 2007 to 2012, he was Honorary Consultant at the Oxford Churchill Hospital and also led a research group at the University of Oxford at the Gray Institute for Radiation Oncology and Biology. His research focus there was the interaction of tumor cells with the tumor milieu. As Professor of Translational Clinical Oncology, he also led the Master’s course in Radiation Biology. He then became vice chair at the Department of Radiation Therapy of the University Hospital Freiburg before moving to Magdeburg to lead the University Department of Radiation Oncology.