Farewell Prof. Hans-Georg Rammensee!

He’ll be back!

#Retiring is never easy. Especially not, when your job is rather a lifetime profession and you are doing it with passion, enthusiasm and dedication. This can definitely be said about Prof. Dr. Hans-Georg Rammensee who has been a true pioneer of T-cell #immunology and one of the pioneers of mRNA vaccine development. Since 1996, he was head of the department of immunology at the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen and played a major role in making the research discipline and the department an international lighthouse. Today's #farewell #symposium showed how great the recognition and appreciation for Prof. Rammensee’s work is, with over 200 guests, colleagues and friends celebrating his countless achievements. As one of our three Cluster speakers and head of the immunotherapies research area, he had a big share in enabling us to launch our “Image-Guided and Functionally Instructed Tumor Therapies” Cluster of Excellence back in 2019.

At the age of 70 many people have already spent years in retirement and looking for new ways to spend their acquired leisure. But not Hans-Georg Rammensee. Fortunately, he will remain on the big scientific stage as a senior professor and will continue to provide us with advice and support in the future. But if he might feel a little bit tired, he now has a brand new park bench to relax sponsored by Immatics and his former PhD-student and present CEO Harpreet Singh of Immatics.

We could now list your numerous awards, prizes and scientific achievements at this point, but this would still not come close to doing justice to this special occasion. Therefore, we as your iFIT Cluster would much rather say thank you. Thank you for being such an excellent scientist, an encouraging leader, a humble human-being and above all a true friend. We wish you all the best for your future challenges. The same passion and commitment that has characterized you in the past and are more than grateful to have had the opportunity to work with such an inspiring researcher.