Lars Schaade has headed the Robert Koch Institute since October 2023. He is a specialist in medical microbiology and infectious disease epidemiology, has habilitated in medical microbiology and virology and is an adjunct professor at Charité. After working at the Universities of Göttingen and Aachen and as an adviser and head of division at the Federal Ministry of Health, Schaade came to the Robert Koch Institute in 2010. He worked there as head of Department and, from 2011, as Vice President before being appointed President of the Robert Koch Institute in 2023.