Heisenberg Professor of Translational Epidemiology, Institute of Epidemiology and Social Medicine, University of Münster, Germany; Lecturer, Ageing Epidemiology Unit, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, UK
Dr. Christina Lill is Heisenberg Professor of Translational Epidemiology, Institute of Epidemiology and Social Medicine, University of Münster, Germany, and lecturer at the School of Public Health at Imperial College London, UK. She is a medical doctor (M.D.) and an epidemiologist (M.Sc.) by training, with a research focus in neuroscience and neurogenetics. She worked at Harvard Medical School, Charité University Hospital and Max Planck Institute of Molecular Genetics, Berlin, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, and University of Lübeck. Her expertise lies in the molecular epidemiology of complex diseases, predominantly neurodegenerative diseases and quantitative ageing phenotypes. A primary goal of her research is to identify molecular and environmental determinants of these phenotypes, and to decipher how these factors interact in modifying trait variability. Among other projects, she developed and maintained the PDGene database for genetic association studies in Parkinson’s disease, which led to the identification of ITGA8 as one of the first bona-fide GWAS-derived genetic risk loci in Parkinson’s disease. Furthermore, her group has recently begun to lead several international projects to identify multi-omics based biomarker profiles that predict neurodegenerative diseases prior to clinical onset. To reach this goal, Dr. Lill has access to the unique resources of the EPIC cohort (https://epic.iarc.fr), one of the worldwide largest and deeply phenotyped prospective cohorts. Within EPIC she acts as chair of the “Neurodegenerative Diseases” working group. Throughout her career, Dr. Lill received numerous awards, e.g. awards of the German National Merit Foundation and of the German Academic Exchange Service, and the Renate Maass Award for Brain Research.
