The HPI says goodbye: Ilona & Joachim Hauber go into retirement

On September 30, the HPI said goodbye to Prof. Joachim Hauber and his wife Ilona, who are retiring. With great gratitude and appreciation, the HPI looks back on their almost twenty years of joint work in research and teaching at our institute.

With the retirement of Joachim and Ilona Hauber, two highly esteemed colleagues are leaving the institute, whose research work has had a significant and lasting impact on HPI's profile, true to the Leibniz signature theoria cum praxi. Ilona and Joachim Hauber had been working at the HPI since 2002 and laid the foundation for their groundbreaking work on the development of the molecular gene scissors Brec, whose efficacy for curing HIV/AIDS will now be tested in a clinical trial at the UKE.

Joachim Hauber started his scientific career in 1977 in Tübingen, where he studied biology (diploma). After receiving his doctorate (Dr. rer. nat.) in the mid-1980s, he laid the foundations for his future research work on HIV-1 as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Bryan Cullen. In 1988, he moved to the Sandoz/Novartis Research Institute in Vienna as a section leader / laboratory head. After eight years of successful HIV research, he accepted an appointment to a C3 professorship at the Institute of Clinical and Molecular Virology in Erlangen, Germany. Another six years later, he took over as head of the research department of Cell Biology and Virology (since 2013 research department of Antiviral Strategies) at the HPI, so that from 2002 the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg became the Haubers' new center of life. At the same time, Joachim Hauber accepted the call to a C4 professorship at the UKE.

The scientific achievements are reflected in more than 160 publications. Joachim Hauber received numerous high-ranking scientific honors and was on the editorial board of several renowned journals. The Haubers have significantly advanced and shaped the research and development of the HPI. As Scientific Director (2004 - 2006), as Deputy Scientific Director (2002 - 2004 and 2009 - 2014), and as Chairman and member of the Scientific Council, Joachim Hauber has contributed quite decisively to the scientific success and, through the planning of the new building, also to the external appearance of the institute. Ilona and Joachim Hauber are now entering a well-deserved retirement, which will continue to include scientific activities with the spin-off of PROVIREX.

The Board of Directors and all employees of the HPI wish them both all the best for their new phase of life, especially good health, much success with PROVIREX and continued unbridled creative energy.