Professor Jürgen Wehland passed away unexpectedly on 16 August 2010 at the age of 58.

Jürgen Wehland was a highly esteemed researcher and valued colleague, and his death has been a great loss for every staff member of the Helmholtz Centre. Wehland studied biology in Göttingen, and after earning a Ph.D. at Bonn University, he conducted research at the National Cancer institute in Bethesda, U.S. In 1989 he began working as a research associate in the microbiology department of the Society for Biotechnology Research (now the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Science [HZI]) and directed the cell biology department there from 1994 to 1997. In 1997 he was appointed professor of cell biology and immunology at the Braunschweig University of Technology. In September 2009 Wehland was made acting scientific director of the HZI and in January 2010 he was awarded this position on a permanent basis.

Wehland was vice-president of the German Society for Cell Biology and was presented with the Descartes Award in 2007 for his work on Listeria bacteria in their role as pathogens. His research into cytoskeletal processes and Listeria bacteria is reflected in more than 160 publications in esteemed scientific journals. Jürgen Wehland played a central role in transforming the HZI into a highly productive modern centre for infection research.

Wehland was a member of several executive boards and committees in the German Research Foundation and served on the advisory board of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin. He chaired the Berlin government committee on evaluating the Leibniz Community.

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