Alcohol and Alcohol-related Diseases

Sebastian Mueller is Professor of Medicine and the current Director of the Center for Alcohol Research at the University of Heidelberg. He studied medicine in Leipzig, Denver and Strasbourg and obtained a PhD in Biophysics. He was gastroenterology resident and consultant in Heidelberg, postdoctoral Humboldt fellow at USC in Los Angeles and lecturer at the BIDMC/Harvard Medical School from 2005-2007. For the last 15 years, he has served as Vice Head of the Department of Internal Medicine at Salem Medical Center in Heidelberg. Professor Mueller's translational research includes the pathophysiology, genetics, diagnosis and treatment of liver diseases, namely alcoholic liver disease. His long-term basic research interests focus on hepatic iron metabolism and redox regulation, with continuous funding from the DFG, NIH and others. He has published more than 200 original articles and, among others, the first book on Liver elastography which addresses the non-invasive assessment of liver fibrosis. From 2017-2021, he was President of the European Society of Biomedical Research on Alcoholism (ESBRA). Prof. Mueller also holds guest professor positions at the Institute of Hepatology in London and in Nanning, PR China. He regularly sees liver patients at VISCERA/Hirslanden in Bern, Switzerland.¿ Markus Heilig is Vice-Chancellor's Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Center for Social and Affective Neuroscience at Linköping University, Sweden. He received his MD and PhD from Sweden's Lund University, and was a post-doctoral fellow with Dr. George Koob at the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA. Prior to his current appointment, Heilig served in various clinical and academic leadership positions at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm (1995 - 2004), and as Director of intramural cl^300 papers, and received numerous awards, including the European Neuropsychopharmacology Award and the Swedish Söderberg Award. He is an elected member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, and a Wallenberg Clinical Scholar.