Prof. Dr. Enrico Schleiff is president of Goethe University Frankfurt and opens the TechConference with introductory remarks.

Goethe University has always been a place for relevant social debates. Digitization and Big Data, as well as Digitalization and Big Data Analytics are topics of high importance in today’s and future discourses. I am very delighted that the student initiative “TechAcademy” once again hosts a trendsetting event under the patronage of our university. Join us on our university`s mission to meet the challenges of the digital age and our digital future!

Biography
Professor Enrico Schleiff studied physics and biophysics at the Charles University in Prague, the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, and the University of Basel. He received his doctorate in biochemistry from McGill University in Montreal and his “Habilitation” in botany and cell biology from LMU Munich.

In 2007, he assumed the professorship for Molecular Cell Biology of Plants in the Department of Biosciences at Goethe University Frankfurt a.M. He conducts research in particular on the understanding of plant function and response – such as protein synthesis in plant cells and their adaptation under heat stress, biogenesis of ribosomes, and transport of molecules and proteins across membranes.

In the field of collaborative research, he was, among others, chair of a Marie Curie EU programme Initial Training Network (2012-2017) and vice-spokesperson of the Cluster of Excellence Macromolecular Complexes (2012-2019).

Since 2013, he has been a trusted lecturer of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation and was involved in the board of the German University Association of Advanced Graduate Teaching (UniWiND/GUAT, 2012-2021). In university self-administration, he was most recently Chairman of the Board of the Frankfurt Institute of Advanced Study (2018-2020), and before that (2012- 2018) Vice President of Goethe University with responsibility for young academics, equal opportunities and academic infrastructures.

He has been President of Goethe University Frankfurt am Main since January 2021.

Credit: Photo by Uwe Dettmar, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt