Christian Koch

Christian A. Koch entered the medical school after attending the humanistic part (Latinum, English, and Graecum) of the Neues Gymnasium Nuremberg with the final Abitur grade of 1.2 (top 4%). After his graduation from the Medical School at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (total grade: 1.66, top 5%) in 1991, he pursued training in neurosurgery (Professor Wassmann) and neurology before being drafted from the German army to work in Leipzig as a General Practitioner with the rank of Captain. Moreover, he had passed the FMGEMS in 1991 and matched by the National Resident Matching Program to start residency in internal medicine at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, USA, under the chairmanship of Professor EL Mazzaferri, a renowned thyroidologist, who convinced him to stay in Internal Medicine and focus on endocrinology/neuroendocrinology. For clinical and research training in endocrinology at NIH (L Nieman, NJ Sarlis, MC Skarulis, PM Yen), Georgetown University (JG Verbalis), and WHC (KD Burman), Koch was selected to work at the National Institutes of Health under the guidance of Professor George P. Chrousos. There, he became familiar with bench research focusing on the molecular pathogenesis of neuroendocrine tumors which became also the title of his Ph.D./D.S. degrees' theses, in Germany called Habilitation. In an interdisciplinary effort in collaboration with Professors Vortmeyer, Oldfield, Zhuang, Lubensky, and Pacak, major landmark articles on the pathogenesis of tumors were written. In 2002, after having been offered to join the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn, USA, as a Senior Associate Consultant, he had decided to return to Germany and joined Professor Ralf Paschke at the University of Leipzig, before taking on the position as a Professor and the Director of the Division of Endocrinology at the University of Mississippi in Jackson, Miss, USA. Moreover, his focus remains translational research with questions arising from patient encounters, trying to explain clinical observations by looking at bench results to further improve patient care.

Biography Updated on 10 December 2008

Scholarly Contributions [Data Provided by ]