Axel Haverich

Axel Haverich, born on 9 March 1953 in Lemgo, is a German cardiac surgeon. He studied medicine at the Hannover Medical School, graduated in 1978, and spent time as a research assistant in cardiovascular surgery at Stanford University. After becoming a senior surgeon at Hannover in 1985 and completing his habilitation in 1987, he directed heart and vascular surgery at Kiel University from 1993 to 1996 and then returned to Hannover as medical director of cardiac, thoracic, transplant and vascular surgery. Much of his work concerns tissue engineering and implantable organs for the heart and vessels; his team reported the transplantation of decellularized, stem cell reseeded heart valves in two children in 2006. He founded the Leibniz Research Laboratories for Biotechnology and Artificial Organs in 1996 and the company Corlife in 2006, and in 2017 proposed that arteriosclerotic plaques arise from inflammation of the vasa vasorum. He served as president of the German Society of Surgery in 2010 and 2011 and received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 1995.