Joachim L. Schultze

Genome research

Single-cell analysis

Swarm Learning

Systems medicine

Joachim L. Schultze is a physician and Scientific Director (interim) of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE).  As Director of Systems Medicine together with his team, he conducts research at the intersection of immunology, genomics, and data science. 

To improve the diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, Schultze uses AI to analyze the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying these diseases by observing specific patterns of gene activity. In the future, this will enable entirely new, individually tailored therapeutic approaches (personalized medicine).

To enable such individual analyses, AI must process vast amounts of data. Schultze is developing innovative methods for this purpose: in Swarm Learning, medical institutions worldwide collaboratively train algorithms on distributed, decentralized datasets. To ensure data privacy, individual patient data remains protected at all times. 

Schultze has received numerous awards for his work and is among the most highly cited researchers worldwide. In addition to his work at the DZNE, he is also Professor of Genomics and Immunoregulation at the University of Bonn. He studied medicine in Tübingen and spent ten years at Harvard Medical School in Boston. He returned to Germany in 2002 with the Sofia Kovalevskaja Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and has been conducting research at the DNZE since 2015. He coordinates and manages several national and international programs on the application of single-cell technologies and maintains extensive collaborations with industry partners.