Director of the Institute of Epidemiology
Prof. Dr. Annette Peters
“We live in a changing world. Ageing societies and climate change affect our health now and tomorrow. The pandemic shows how important epidemiology is. My vision is to understand and mitigate the burden of disease based on cohort studies.”
Academic Career and Research Areas
Annette Peters pioneered work identifying the link between ambient particulate matter and cardiovascular disease. Understanding the role of air pollution in the development of chronic diseases remains a key focus of her research, but today her work spans from environmental to molecular epidemiology of cardiometabolic diseases.
With large-scale prospective population-based cohort studies she and her team investigate how genetic, environmental and behavioral risk factors jointly shape health and disease.
Her training in biology and mathematics in Germany and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, USA, allows an interdisciplinary approach spanning from environmental health to molecular epidemiology. Key aspects of her research include an aging society, climate change, and how both influence health today and in the future.
Annette Peters has a leading role within the German National Cohort NAKO, which prospectively investigates 205,000 men and women. NAKO, a nation-wide large-scale epidemiological study, includes innovative biobanking for all members and magnet resonance tomography assessments for 30,000 participants. As principal investigator, Annette Peters is responsible for the NAKO study center in Augsburg and the central biorepository at Helmholtz Munich. She chaired the NAKO board of directors from 2018 to 2022 and was reelected as chair in 2025 for another three years.
Annette Peters is also responsible for the longitudinal cohort study KORA (Cooperative Health Research in the Augsburg Region). KORA follows with regular re-examinations 18,000 individuals recruited in the age of 25 to 74 years in 1984 to 2001 in the Augsburg region. Thee Study enlarged its research portfolio to age-related diseases as part of the KORA-Age project.
Fields of Work and Expertise
Environmental Epidemiology Molecular Epidemiology Cohort Studies Cardiovascular Diseases Metabolic Diseases Healthy Ageing Magnet Resonance Imaging Biomarkers Statistical Methods
Professional Background
Chair of the Board of Directors, German National Cohort, NAKO e.V., Re-election, first term 2018-2022
Member of WHO Scientific Advisory Group on “Air Pollution & Health”
Spokesperson of the User facility NAKO within Helmholtz Health
Director of the Institute of Epidemiology, Helmholtz Munich
Full Professor, Chair of Epidemiology at the Institute for Medical Data Processing, Biometrics and Epidemiology, Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich
Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Environmental Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston
Awards and Recognitions
- Inaugural Fellow of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology, 2021
- John Goldsmith Award For achievements in the field of environmental epidemiology, International Society for Environmental Epidemiology, 2019
- President of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology 2012 - 2013
- David V. Bates Award, First awardee of the Young Investigator Award, American Thoracic Society, USA, 2000
What Makes Us Sick? Annette Peters on Schwanke meets Science
Watch the ARD Alpha media feature (available in German only)
Ludwig Maximilians Universität München
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
German National Cohort
Cooperative Health Research in the Augsburg Region
DZHK - German Center for Cardiovascular Research
DZD - German Center for Diabetes Research
Swiss TPH - Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute
ISGlobal - Barcelona Institute for Global Health
University Utrecht
