Prof. Dr. Annette Peters

Annette Peters pioneered work identifying the link between ambient particulate matter and cardiovascular disease. 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 epidemiology, biology and mathematics allows an interdisciplinary approach spanning from environmental health to molecular epidemiology.

Early in her career, she has as principal investigator conducted several panel studies and a case-crossover study assessing the role of environmental exposures on respiratory and cardiovascular disease. A lifelong interest is the role of ultrafine particles and she spearheads a research program on environmental measurements for air pollution and other environmental exposures since two decades.

Annette Peters is also responsible for the follow-up of 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 Augsburg region. They have enlarged their research portfolio to age-related diseases as part of the KORA-Age project.

Today, Annette Peters has a national leading role within the German National Cohort NAKO, which investigates prospectively 205,000 men and women. NAKO is a nation-wide beyond the state of the art large-scale epidemiological study including innovative biobanking for all members and magnet resonance tomography assessments for 30,000 participants. Until 2022, she chaired the board of directors. Even more, she is a principal investigator responsible for the NAKO study center in Augsburg and the central biorepository at Helmholtz Munich. Finally yet importantly, she started additional data collection in order to contribute to understanding the health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.