Bonhoeffer studied cello in Basel under
Heinrich Schiff and physics in Munich and Vienna. In 1995, he did his doctorate with
Martin A. Nowak under
Robert May at the Institute of Zoology at the
University of Oxford on the
population dynamics and evolution of viral diseases. He worked as a
postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford and
Rockefeller University. In 1998, he was appointed junior group leader at the
Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel. In 2001, Sebastian Bonhoeffer was awarded a research professorship by the
Swiss National Science Foundation at
ETH Zurich. He has been Professor of
Theoretical Biology at the Department of Environmental Systems Science and since 2005 and serves as Director of the Collegium Helveticum since 2020. Sebastian Bonhoeffer's research concerns the evolution and
population biology of
bacteria and
viruses. He develops and analyses mathematical and computational models for the dynamics of infectious diseases. For example, he developed population-dynamic models of viral infections, which allowed important insights into pathogenesis and treatment of
HIV infection. More recent work deals with the development and spread of
antibiotic resistance. Group alumni include
Tanja Stadler, Martin Ackermann, and
Marcel Salathé. Sebastian Bonhoeffer is an elected member of the
European Molecular Biology Organization and international honorary member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Sebastian Bonhoeffer is married to musician Hanna Weinmeister and they have two children. == References ==