Mr Rainer Sauerborn

After two years of training in general medicine in Germany and Scotland, RS headed the Nouna health district in Burkina Faso from 1979 to 1982. Subsequently he trained as apediatrician at Heidelberg University and the University of London. He decided tobecome a public health researcher and studied the field at the Harvard School of PublicHealth. After a stint as Coordinator of the Health Office at the Harvard Institute forInternational Development (1990-6), he became the director of the Institute of GlobalHealth, formerly Inst. of Tropical Hygiene and Public Health. Until 2004, his researchfocus was on improving the quality of and access to health care in low-income countries.For the past 15 years, he has worked on the nexus of climate change and healthparticularly focusing on populations in the global South. Translating science to policy, heserved on the Scientific Advisory Board on Global Environmental Changes for theGerman Federal Government (2000-2004) and was a lead author of the health chapterof the 5 th IPCC report (2009-2014). He (co)developed 6 MOOCs for different audienceson the topic. Recently, he worked with colleagues on climate and violence as drivers ofout-migration.Since his successor, Humboldt professor Till Bärnighausen took over the leadership ofthe institute in 2017, he led a new large North-South research consortium on “ClimateChange and Health in Sub-Saharan Africa” funded by the German DFG and the SwissNational Fund.