Anna K. H. Hirsch

Antibiotic research

Drug discovery with AI

Drug design, synthesis, and development with AI

Anna Hirsch heads the Department of Drug Design and Optimization at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI). Together with her interdisciplinary team, the chemist focuses on developing new antibiotics, particularly those targeting multidrug-resistant pathogens. Hirsch also utilizes AI models for this purpose: these tools aid in the identification of new synthetic compounds and their optimization. At the same time, they can be used to make predictions about the effectiveness of these substances against known pathogens as well as other properties that make them promising drug candidates.

Hirsch’s research significantly accelerates the discovery and development of new antibiotics, as it enables her team to focus on particularly promising candidates. Additionally, AI systems support the design of entirely new molecular structures. Hirsch’s department is based at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS).

Anna Hirsch studied natural sciences with a focus on chemistry at Cambridge and MIT and received her doctorate from ETH Zurich in 2008. After working in Strasbourg and Groningen, she joined HIPS in 2017, which was founded by HZI in collaboration with Saarland University. Hirsch is a professor of medicinal chemistry in the Faculty of Pharmacy. She has received several awards for her research, most recently the Grand Prix en Sciences Chimiques de l'Institut Grand-Ducal (2024) and the SCT Award for Drug Discovery Chemistry (2025).