Profile and Mission

The Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology focuses on understanding how microbes cause disease and how hosts respond to this challenge. Our mission is to understand infections by viruses, bacteria, parasites, fungi and worms of two reasons: they present one of the most significant medical burdens on earth and the interaction between microbes and their host are an essential driver of evolution

Our institute brings together scientists from various disciplines – in this way, we want to find answers to the fundamental questions of infection biology. Hence the scale of our research spans through the atomic, molecular, cellular, tissular, organismal, clinical and finally social level. The Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology is located at the historical Campus of the Charité Clinic in Berlin.

We are sharing our building with the German Rheumatism Research Center and the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in the heart of Berlin—right between the main station and the government quarter.