Franz X. Heinz, MD,Prof. Dr. ,Head of Department of Virology, Medical University of Vienna, Austria.
He did his PhD in Virology and graduated in 1976 at the University of Vienna. He was involved in the development of new technologies for the production of tick-borne encephalitis vaccines: he was a member of the WHO steering committee for the development of dengue and Japanese encephalitis vaccines and was a Full Professor of Virology at the University of Graz, Austria; From 2006 to 2011 he was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Intercell and from 2012 to 2014 of Hookipa, both Vienna-based biopharmaceutical companies.
Currently Franz X. Heinz is a member of the National Academy of Germany and a core member of the European Academy of Microbiology, as well as a member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of the Robert-Koch Institute in Berlin and the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg. His major research achievements and interests are in the area of flaviviruses with a specific focus on tick-borne encephalitis virus and more recently also on Zika virus, including epidemiology, vaccine development, molecular antigenic structure, molecular mechanisms of virus entry and viral diagnostics.