Jakob Nikolas Kather — Academic CV, Biography & Press Photos

Photograph

Photo © Jakob Nikolas Kather. Free to use in academic and editorial contexts.

Foto: Universität Heidelberg/Arndt

Curriculum Vitae

Academic CV — PDF Career, education, awards, committee and editorial roles, funding, selected publications · 3 pages Download

Last updated: 15 September 2026. For a full publication list see PubMed or Google Scholar.

Short Bio

From 1 October 2026, Jakob Nikolas Kather will be Hopp Foundation Professor of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine at Heidelberg University and founding director of IMAI at Heidelberg University Hospital. Board-certified in internal medicine, he develops AI for oncology and clinical applications. He will remain affiliated with TU Dresden.

Medium Bio

On 1 October 2026, Professor Jakob Nikolas Kather will take up the Hopp Foundation Professorship for “Artificial Intelligence in Medicine” at the Faculty of Medicine at Heidelberg University. He will also become founding director of the Institute for Medical Artificial Intelligence (IMAI) at Heidelberg University Hospital and remain affiliated with TU Dresden. He is board-certified in internal medicine and holds a master’s degree in Medical Physics.

His research focuses on the development of artificial intelligence methods for clinical oncology, with an emphasis on AI-based biomarkers from histopathology, swarm learning, and autonomous clinical AI agents. He is the principal investigator of the ERC Starting Grant NADIR and leads research projects funded by the European Union, the German Cancer Aid, and the German Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR).

He has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed publications and has received the Felix Burda Award, the Thannhauser Prize, and the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize.

Long Bio

On 1 October 2026, Professor Jakob Nikolas Kather will take up the Hopp Foundation Professorship for “Artificial Intelligence in Medicine” at the Faculty of Medicine at Heidelberg University. He will also become founding director of the Institute for Medical Artificial Intelligence (IMAI) at Heidelberg University Hospital and remain affiliated with TU Dresden. He is board-certified in internal medicine and holds a master’s degree in Medical Physics.

He studied medicine in Heidelberg and Mannheim, where he completed his doctoral thesis summa cum laude on tumor angiogenesis, and obtained a Master of Science in Medical Physics. He held postdoctoral positions at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and a Junior Professorship at RWTH Aachen University before his appointment to the Chair of Clinical Artificial Intelligence at TU Dresden in 2022. He also served as a senior physician in oncology in Dresden and has led a research group in Medical Oncology at Heidelberg University Hospital since 2020.

His research program develops artificial intelligence for clinical oncology along three main directions: AI-based biomarkers from histopathology, including the demonstration of microsatellite instability prediction directly from H&E slides; swarm learning and explainable AI for distributed medical research; and autonomous AI agents for clinical workflows. He is the principal investigator of the ERC Starting Grant NADIR and leads grants from EU Horizon Europe, the German Cancer Aid, and the BMFTR.

He has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed publications, including papers in Nature Medicine, Nature Cancer, and The Lancet, and is the author of the German textbook „KI in der Medizin“ (Springer). He serves as Co-Chair of the ESMO AI and Digital Oncology Committee, AI series editor at Annals of Oncology, deputy editor at npj Precision Oncology, and editorial consultant for The Lancet. He has received the Felix Burda Award (2025), the Thannhauser Prize (2022), the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize (2021), and the Theodor Frerichs Prize (2020).

Affiliations

Heidelberg appointment — from 1 October 2026

Hopp Foundation Professorship for “Artificial Intelligence in Medicine”, Heidelberg Faculty of Medicine, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany
Founding Director, Institute for Medical Artificial Intelligence (IMAI), Heidelberg University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany

Continuing affiliations

1. Else Kroener Fresenius Center for Digital Health, Faculty of Medicine, TUD Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Germany
2. Department of Medicine I, Faculty of Medicine, TUD Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Germany
3. Medical Oncology, National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT), University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
4. Pathology & Data Analytics, Leeds Institute of Medical Research at St James's, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom

Disclosures

JNK holds shares in StratifAI, Synagen, Spira Labs, Tremont AI, and Saterra AI; is Co-PI on institutional research grants from GSK and AstraZeneca, and declares honoraria or consulting fees from AstraZeneca, Bayer, Bioptimus, Daiichi Sankyo, Eisai, Janssen, Merck, MSD, Novartis, BMS, Roche, and Pfizer.

Updated: May 3, 2026

Funding

JNK is supported by the German Cancer Aid DKH (DECADE, 70115166), the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space BMFTR (PEARL, 01KD2104C; CAMINO, 01EO2101; TRANSFORM LIVER, 031L0312A; TANGERINE, 01KT2302 through ERA-NET Transcan; Come2Data, 16DKZ2044A; DEEP-HCC, 031L0315A; DECIPHER-M, 01KD2420A; NextBIG, 01ZU2402A; PROSURV, 01KD2509C), the German Research Foundation (DFG, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) as part of Germany's Excellence Strategy – EXC 2050/2 – Project ID 390696704 – Cluster of Excellence "Centre for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop" (CeTI) of Technische Universität Dresden, as well as through DFG-funded collaborative research projects (TRR 412/1, 535081457; SFB 1709/1 2025, 533056198), the German Academic Exchange Service DAAD (SECAI, 57616814), the German Federal Joint Committee G-BA (TransplantKI, 01VSF21048), the European Union EU's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme (ODELIA, 101057091; GENIAL, 101096312), the European Research Council ERC (NADIR, 101114631), the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BELLADONNA, BCRF-25-225) and the National Institute for Health and Care Research NIHR (Leeds Biomedical Research Centre, NIHR203331). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care. This work was funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Updated: January 15, 2026

Contact

For invitations, interview requests, photo and logo files, or further information, please write to contact@kather.ai .