Ulrich Rudolph Mahlknecht (born April 29, 1967) is a German-Italian physician-scientist renowned for his contributions to hematology, oncology, and clinical epigenetics.
Education and Training
Mahlknecht grew up in La Villa in South Tyrol, Italy. He studied medicine at the University of Bochum, the University of Birmingham, Paris-Sud 11 University, and the University of Tübingen, where he received his medical doctorate in 1995. He completed postgraduate medical training in internal medicine at the University of Freiburg. From 1996 to 1999, he was a graduate student at the Picower Graduate School of Molecular Medicine (State University of New York), later working there as a postdoc and Senior Scientist.
Career
From 1999 to 2003, Mahlknecht received specialist training in internal medicine and hematology/oncology at the Goethe University Frankfurt, where he became an assistant professor of internal medicine. Between 2004 and 2007, he was an associate professor at University Hospital Heidelberg and head of the acute leukemias and myelodysplastic syndromes task force. He founded the Heidelberg excellence center for myelodysplastic syndromes.
In 2007, he became a full professor of medicine at Saarland University, where he heads the Division of Immunotherapy and Gene Therapy within the Department of Internal Medicine. Since 2012, he has been head of the department of hematology/oncology at the St. Lukas Klinik in Solingen, Germany.
Research and Leadership
Mahlknecht was a scholar within the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft's Emmy Noether young investigator excellence program, and his research was also supported by the Deutsche José Carreras Leukemia Foundation. He has actively published in cancer and HIV research, authoring several notable papers, including work on histone deacetylase 3 gene organization and HIV-related immune mechanisms.
He is the president of the Clinical Epigenetics Society (CLEPSO), a nonprofit international organization promoting research in epigenetic mechanisms. In 2009, he founded and became editor-in-chief of the journal Clinical Epigenetics (published by BioMed Central). He also serves as editor-in-chief for the Journal of Clinical Trials and the Journal of Blood Disorders & Transfusion, and as deputy editor-in-chief of Genetics and Epigenetics.
Recognition
In May 2019, Mahlknecht received the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award from Marquis Who's Who in recognition of his contributions to healthcare and higher education.
