Association bodies & committees

General Assembly of Members

The General Assembly is the supreme body of NAKO e.V., sets the guidelines for the work of the organisation and decides on issues of general importance.

Its tasks include in particular Electing the Board of Directors and appointing the members of individual committees. It advises on the status and planning of the German National Cohort (NAKO) and decides on scientific priorities, standards, instruments, processes and procedures. It develops concepts for quality assurance and development as well as the “Code of Ethics” of NAKO (PDF in German) and decides on the allocation of data and biomaterials to external researchers. It decides on the business plan submitted by the Board of Directors and the annual financial statements as well as the contribution and utilisation regulations and the regulations on the utilisation, protection and exploitation of work results.

Board of Directors

The Board of Directors of NAKO e.V. is the managing body of the organisation. It consists of five members. It is the external representative of the German National Cohort (NAKO) towards science, politics, the media, the public and sponsors.

The tasks of the Board of Directors include, in particular, coordinating the activities of the members in the planning and implementation of the German National Cohort (NAKO), examining and deciding on internal and external applications for the transfer of biomaterials and/or data from the NAKO and controlling the inflow of funding and the outflow of project funding to the participating institutions. The Board of Directors is also responsible for preparing the annual financial statements and the annual report.

NAKO e.V Board of Directors. Copyright: NAKO/"medJUNGE’

Prof Dr Henry Völzke - Chairman of the Board of Directors

Head of the SHIP/Clinical Epidemiological Research Department at the Institute of Community Medicine at the University Medical Centre Greifswald

Dr Esther Breunig

Management Controlling, DKFZ Heidelberg

Prof Dr Wolfgang Lieb

Director of the Institute of Epidemiology at Kiel University

Prof Dr Tobias Pischon

Head of the Molecular Epidemiology Research Unit, Max Delbrück Centre for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association (MDC), Berlin

Prof Dr Tamara Schikowski

Head of the research group ‘Environmental Epidemiology of Lung, Brain and Skin Ageing’ at the IUF-Leibniz Institute for Environmental Medical Research Düsseldorf

Scientific Advisory Board

The organisation is supported by an international Scientific Advisory Board. This advises the Executive Board and the General Assembly on all scientific and programmatic issues. The Scientific Advisory Board consists of at least six and a maximum of ten scientists working on a voluntary basis. For questions of transfer and translation into practice, the Scientific Advisory Board forms a committee that can recruit other personalities, e.g. from industry and associations, as members.

Prof. Dr. Paul Elliott

Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, School of Public Health, and Head of Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Imperial College London, United Kingdom

Prof. Dr. Nicole Probst-Hensch

Head of Department, Genetic Epidemiology of Non-Communicable Diseases, Swiss TPH, Basel, Switzerland

Prof. Dr. Vasan S. Ramachandran

M.D., Principal Investigator and Director of the Framingham Heart Study (FHS), and Principal Investigator of the Risk Underlying Rural Areas Longitudinal Study (RURAL). Adjunct Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at BUSM/BUSPH, Dean of the University of Texas School of Public Health San Antonio, USA

Prof. Dr. Udo Hoffmann

Udo Hoffmann, formerly Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School; Chief Cardiovascular Imaging and Director Center of Cardiovascular Imaging Research, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, Co-Chair Imaging Framingham Heart Study, Framingham, USA, Chief Scientific Officer at Cleerly

Prof. Dr. Beate Ritz

Beate Ritz – Departments of Epidemiology and Environmental Health Sciences, UCLA Fielding, School of Public Health, Los Angeles, USA

Prof. Dr. Martin Bobak

Martin Bobak – Epidemiology & Public Health, Institute of Epidemiology & Health, University College London, United Kingdom

Ethics Advisory Board

The NAKO e.V. association is supported by an ethics advisory board consisting of six to ten volunteer experts who represent ethical, social, scientific, medical and legal concerns in the field of life sciences in a special way. A participant in the German National Cohort (NAKO) is also a member of the committee.

The Ethics Advisory Board advises the Executive Board and the General Assembly on all ethical issues that arise during the implementation of the German National Cohort (NAKO). Its work is based on the “Code of Ethics” of NAKO (PDF in German) adopted by the General Assembly, which sets out the ethical framework for the study.

Prof. Dr. Jochen Taupitz

Chair, Medical Law and Bioethics, University of Mannheim

Prof. Dr. Elmar Doppelfeld

Former Chairman of the working group of medical ethics committees in the Federal Republic of Germany

Prof. Dr. Dr. Walter Lehmacher

Former Director of the Institute of Medical Statistics, Informatics and Epidemiology and Chairman of the Ethics Committee of the University of Cologne

Prof. Dr. Markus M. Nöthen

Human Genetics at the University Hospital Bonn

Prof. Dr. Michael Fuchs

Professor für Praktische Philosophie/Ethik Vorstand des Instituts für Praktische Philosophie/Ethik Fakultät für Philosophie und für Kunstwissenschaft Kath. Priv. Universität Linz, Österreich

Prof. Dr. Eva Winkler

Managing Director NCT Heidelberg, Head: Section Translational Medical Ethics; Programme Ethics and Patient Orientation in Oncology (NCT-EPOC), Heidelberg University Hospital (UKHD), Member of the German Ethics Council

Ursula Klinnert-Weber

NAKO participant, retired teacher

MRI Advisory Board

The MRI Advisory Board advises the MR Imaging Core and the MRI sites. The members have extensive experience from international studies such as the Framingham Heart Study, UK Biobank and the Rotterdam Study. They advise the German National Cohort (NAKO) experts to ensure maximum safety, efficiency and quality in MR data collection.

Prof. Dr. Christopher M. Kramer

University of Virginia Health System, USA

Prof. Dr. Steffen Petersen

London Chest Hospital, United Kingdom

Prof. Dr. M. A. Ikram

Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Prof. Dr. Jeffrey Carr

Vanderbilt University Medical Center, USA

Prof. Dr. Udo Hoffmann

Division Chief, Cardiovascular Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA

Prof. Dr. Gabriel Krestin

Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Prof. Dr. Chris O’Donnel

Massachusetts General Hospital, USA

Use & Access Committee (UAC)

The Use & Access Committee (UAC) consists of nine members who are elected by the General Assembly for a term of four years on the recommendation of the Executive Board. After careful examination of the incoming usage applications and Level 3 applications in accordance with the Association’s usage regulations and Level 3 regulations, the UAC makes a written recommendation to the Board of Directors on each application.

NameInstitution
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Lieb (Speaker of UAC)Kiel University
Prof. Dr. Nico DraganoDüsseldorf University Hospital
Prof. Dr. André KarchUniversity of Münster
Prof. Dr. Dr. Michael LeitzmannUniversity of Regensburg
Prof. Dr. Susanne MoebusUniversity Hospital Essen
Prof. Dr. Tobias PischonMax Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association (MDC), Berlin-Buch
Prof. Dr. Tamara SchikowskiLeibniz Research Institute for Environmental Medicine (IUF), Düsseldorf
Dr. Alexandra SchneiderHelmholtz Munich (HMGU)
Prof. Dr. Hajo ZeebLeibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology – BIPS GmbH, Bremen