Jörg Hacker

Born in Grevesmühlen, Mecklenburg, Hacker studied biology from 1970 to 1974 at the Martin Luther University in Halle and obtained his PhD in 1979.

[3][4] In 2011, Hacker was appointed by Chancellor Angela Merkel to the Federal Government’s Ethics Commission on a Safe Energy Supply, co-chaired by Matthias Kleiner and Klaus Töpfer.

[5] In 2017, he was part of the selection committee chaired by Jules A. Hoffmann that chose Stewart Cole as director of the Institut Pasteur.

[8] Hacker's main research interests are the molecular analysis of bacterial pathogens, their spread and variability, as well as their interactions with host cells.

Hacker is responsible for coining the term "pathogenicity island" to describe a region of a bacterial genome that encodes disease causing traits.