Roland Martin

Roland Martin trained in medicine at the University of Würzburg, Germany, pursued post-doctoral work in virology and immunology (1983-1985) and subsequently also a neurology residency at the Dept. Neurology, University of Würzburg. Thereafter (1989-1991), he worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the Neuroimmunology Branch (NIB), NINDS, National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, USA (with Henry McFarland); from 1991-1994 as assistant professor of neurology at the Dept. Neurology, University of Tübingen, Germany, and from 1994-1997 as a Heisenberg Professor of the German Research Society both in Tübingen and at NIB, NINDS, NIH. 1997-1998 he worked as Research Assistant Professor at the Dept. of Neurology, University of Maryland, Baltimore, USA, and from 1998-2005 first as acting Section Chief and then Section Chief, Cellular Immunology Section, NIB, NINDS, NIH. From 2005-2006, he held a professorship of the Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) at the Neuroimmunology Unit, University Hospital Vall D'Hebron, Barcelona, Spain, and from 2006-2011 he directed the Institute for Neuroimmunology and Clinical MS Research, University Hospital Hamburg Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany. Since 2011, he worked as professor of neurology and neuroimmunology at the University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, and headed the MS Center at the University Hospital in Zurich. He is retired from his clinical position since 2022, but continues to pursue research at the University of Zurich at the Institute of Experimental Immunology (Institute Münz) and the Department of Clinical Neuroscience (with T. Olsson, Hans Grönlund), Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden. Since 2021 he also directs research and development at a biotechnology company, Cellerys, which had been outfounded from the University of Zurich and pursues antigen-specific tolerance in MS. His main research interests are pathomechanisms of MS, the development of treatments from idea to early clinical proof-of-concept, the role of bacteria and viruses as triggers of MS and neuro-inflammatory conditions, and antigen recognition by T cells.