Annette Peters

Prof. Dr. Annette Peters is Director of the Institute of Epidemiology at Helmholtz Munich and full Professor of Epidemiology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Germany. She studied biology and mathematics in Germany and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, USA. Annette Peters pioneered work identifying the link between ambient particulate matter and cardiovascular disease. Understanding the role of ambient air pollution in contributing to exacerbation and initiation of chronic diseases has been a lifelong research interest, and today, her research focus ranges from environmental health to molecular epidemiology. With largescale prospective population-based cohort studies she and her team investigate how genetic, molecular, environmental, and behavioral risk factors jointly shape health and disease. Annette Peters heads the population-based KORA cohort initiated in Augsburg, Germany, which has followed 18,000 individuals with regular follow-up since the mid-1980s. She also has a leading role within the German National Cohort NAKO, which is prospectively investigating 205,000 men and women since 2014. NAKO is a nation-wide beyond the state-of-the-art largescale epidemiological study including 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. Until 2022, she chaired the NAKO board of directors and started additional data collection in order to contribute to understanding the health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic