New founding dean

Potsdam, 3 March 2021

Prof. Dr. med. Cornelius Frömmel, physician and biochemist, is the new founding dean of the Brandenburg Faculty of Health Sciences which is currently being established. He succeeds Prof. Dr. med. Joachim W. Dudenhausen who launched the faculty as a joint institution of the University of Potsdam, the Brandenburg Medical School Theodor Fontane and the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg and now steps down after two and a half years of development work. At his ceremonious farewell from the University of Potsdam today, Dudenhausen was confident that the new faculty will contribute to advances in the scientific community and progress for the general public.

Potsdam’s university president Prof. Oliver Günther, Ph.D., expresses gratitude and much appreciation for Prof. Dudenhausen’s expertise and long-term experience as a physician and manager - valuable assets in the difficult initial stage of the faculty. He is happy to welcome Prof. Dr. Cornelius Frömmel as a worthy successor.

Prof. Dr. Gesine Grande as president of the BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg agrees and underlines the expected benefits of pooling competences in medicine, biotechnology and health research that exist at the universities in Brandenburg: “We thank Prof. Joachim W. Dudenhausen for his pioneering work and dedication, and we are looking forward to collaborating with Prof. Cornelius Frömmel.”

MHB president Prof. Dr. Edmund Neugebauer is also full of praise for the achievements of Prof. Dudenhausen in organising the new faculty: “With great dedication and an engaging personal manner he always looked for balanced solutions to accommodate all three partner universities. It was not easy, not least because of the distances involved. Now the course has been set, the groundwork is done. Future developments are in the hands of Prof. Cornelius Frömmel as the new founding dean of the faculty. He, too, is a man of experience and will safely guide the faculty through upcoming challenges. We are looking forward to a continuation of the excellent collaboration between faculties and scientific institutions in Brandenburg.”

Prof. Dr. Cornelius Frömmel on his future function: “The position of founding dean of the interuniversity Brandenburg Faculty of Health Sciences is exciting and also demanding. The mission will be to complete the excellent work done so far and meet the expectations Brandenburg has of the health sciences. A specific aspect is that the State of Brandenburg is currently concerned with setting up state-run medical training. Chances of this kind are rare in life! It is particularly challenging to instill team spirit and integrate the respective disciplines from basic research up to the application of findings into the practice of health care.”

In years of service as vice dean for research at the Charité and dean of the Göttingen Medical School, Prof. Frömmel gained experience with building up faculties which he put to good use as a member of the scientific advisory board for the Brandenburg Health Campus. In addition to basic research in medical bioinformatics on which the physician spent most of his academic career he also explored scientific issues in student education and socio-medical questions and thus combines in his key interests the entire range of disciplines covered by the new faculty.

Personal information

Prof. Dr. med. Cornelius Frömmel studied medicine at the Humboldt University in Berlin in the 1970es, followed by a doctorate in 1979 and a post-doctoral lecturing qualification on protein stability in 1988. From 1994 he held a professorship in biochemistry at the Berlin Charité where he was vice dean for research between 1988 and 2005. From 2005 to 2012 he served as dean and board spokesman at the Medical School of the Georg August University in Göttingen, where he then held the first professorship in orthobionics until 2016.

Background

In 2018 the Brandenburg Faculty of Health Sciences was founded as a joint project of the University of Potsdam, the Brandenburg Medical School Theodor Fontane and the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg. It constitutes the core institution of the Brandenburg Health Campus and aims to develop novel services in medicine, nursing and medical technology as well as innovative training programmes. The idea is to contribute to improved provision of health care in the State of Brandenburg in collaboration with further universities and research facilities.

Contact
Prof. Dr. med. Cornelius Frömmel
Phone: +49 331 977 297252
E-Mail: dekanat@fgw-brandenburg.de

(Media information, Brandenburg Faculty of Health Sciences, provided by the University of Potsdam)