Nikolaus Rajewsky (born 1968) is a German system biologist at the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) and at the Charité in Berlin.

He also co-chairs LifeTime, a pan-European research initiative of more than 90 academic institutions and 70 companies, which aims to revolutionize healthcare by mapping, understanding, and targeting cells during disease progression.

In 2006, Rajewsky returned to Germany, where he became a full professor at the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) in Berlin-Buch and at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

[7] BIMSB received initial funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Berlin Senate as a pilot project.

[11] On 26 February 2019 it was formally opened by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel[12] who referred to BIMSB as a “beautiful gem” of the MDC.

[16] To accomplish this goal, LifeTime will integrate and apply single-cell multiomics, machine learning, and personalized disease models such as organoids.

The Science and Technology Advisory Board of LifeTime comprises internationally renowned scientists and industry leaders (including 3 Nobel laureates).

In August 2020, the journal Nature published the Perspective article “LifeTime and improving European healthcare through cell-based interceptive medicine” where scientists explain how these technologies should be rapidly co-developed, transitioned into clinical settings and applied to the five major disease areas (neurological, infectious, chronic inflammatory and cardiovascular diseases and cancer).