Werner Hacke

Professor Werner Hacke, born 1948 in Duisburg, Germany, was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Neurology, University of Heidelberg, from 1987 to 2014 and holds now a Senior Professorship of Neurology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany.

Werner Hacke
Born	1948 Duisburg, Germany
Nationality	German
Occupation	Professor at the University of Heidelberg
Predecessor	Prof. Dr Heinz Gänshirt
Successor	Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Wick
Spouse(s)	Monika
Children	Dr. Nicola Zausig Stefanie Oellers

Graduation

He graduated from the Klinikum Aachen Medical School [1] of the RWTH Aachen and holds also a Master's degree in Psychology.

He is a board certified neurologist, psychiatrist, and neurocritical care specialist. He received his neurology training at the RWTH Aachen medical school, Germany, and Berne, Switzerland. After spending almost one year of research at the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in La Jolla, California, he was elected to the chair position of Neurology at the University of Heidelberg, at that time being the youngest chairman of Neurology ever elected in Germany. In 2014, after 27 years as chair and head of the department he stepped down from his clinical duties and is now the first Senior Professor of Medicine at the University of Heidelberg, Germany.

Overview (degrees, profession)

• M.D. Ph.D. D.S.(hon) FESO FWSO
• Senior Professor of Neurology
• Department of Neurology
• University of Heidelberg
• Germany

Institutions

The Department of Neurology at Heidelberg University is one of the largest European neurology departments both by number of in- and out-patients and resources.

The stroke center in Heidelberg is a high volume, hyperacute service. Many treatment- and diagnosis related innovations have been developed there. Prof. Hacke was actively involved in the development of both interventional intra-arterial and intravenous thrombolytic therapy, has pioneered hypothermia and decompressive surgery in malignant MCA-infarction and was instrumental for building the German Stroke Unit Network.

Research

Prof Hacke is involved with many clinical studies, both industry-supported and investigator-driven. Recently he led studies including ECASS I-IV AbESTT I and II, DIAS I and II, CHARISMA, DESTINY, DESTINY II and SPACE 1 and 2, only to name a few, as chair or co-chair of the steering committee.

Awards and honors

Prof Hacke was the recipient of the Yamanouchi Europe research award, the first non-US recipient of the Feinberg Award for excellence in stroke research, given by the American Stroke Association (1998), and the first recipient of the Karolinska Stroke Award, Stockholm, Sweden in 2004, Recipient of the Mihara Award 2009 (Tokyo, Japan) and the Max Jarecki Award (New York, USA) in 2009. In 2013 he was awarded the Wepfer Award by the European stroke conference. In 2018 he received the ESO science award. In 2020 he received the WSO Leadership in Stroke Award.

• He is an honorary member of the Austrian and the Hungarian Stroke Society, the French Neurological Society, Pan-Russian Neurological Association, the American Neurological Association (ANA, Honorary Fellow), The Brasilian Neurological Society and is an honorary president of the Neurocritical Care Society (NCS).

Dr. Hacke has been named an honorary member of the German Neurological Society, the German Stroke Society, the German Society of Neuroradiology, and the German Society of Neurosurgery, being the first Neurologist to receive this honor for more than 100 years.

• Prof Hacke holds an honorary doctor degree given by the State University of Georgia, Tbilisi, and an honorary doctor degree by the University of Debrecen, Hungary.
• Prof Hacke holds honorary professorships by the University of Tiblisi, Georgia and the Universidad de Los Andes, Santiago de Chile, Chile.

Roles, positions and memberships

• Dean of the Medical Faculty Heidelberg 1989-1994
• Member of the Senate of the University of Heidelberg 1989-2000
• Member and Vice-chair of the Board of Directors, Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg 1995-1998 and 2005-2006
• 2000-2002: President of the German Neurological Society
• 2002-2004: President of the German Interdisciplinary Intensive Care Society
• 2006-2008: President of the German Stroke Society
• Since 2005: Member of the Heidelberg Academy of Science
• Member of the Board of Trustees of the World Federation of Neurology (2006 onward) and was first Vice President of the WFN 2009- 2013.
• Prof Hacke was the Founding President of the European Stroke Organisation (ESO).
• He was co-chair of the 2006 World Stroke Conference in Cape Town, South Africa, Chair of the Scientific Committee of the World Stroke Conference in Vienna, 2008, and has organized several large Neurology conferences including the World Stroke Conferences in Seoul (Korea), Brasilia (Brasil) and Istanbul (Turkey)
• He was President of the World Stroke Organization (WSO) 2016–2018.
• Dr. Hacke is a Corresponding Member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences.

Publications

He was on the editorial board of many international journals, European editor of "Stroke" and author of more than 800 peer-reviewed papers in high impact journals. He is the Editor in Chief of the German language specialty journal "Der Nervenarzt" and the Founding Editor in Chief of a new English Language Journal "Neurological Research and Practice", an official open-access journal published by BMC and the German Society of Neurology. He is co-author of the leading German-language textbook of neurology (Neurologie), together with his teacher Prof Klaus Poeck, and several other books on stroke, intensive care, and general neurology. In 2015 he edited the 14th edition of this leading German Neurology Textbook. Hacke has published more than 500 articles listed in PubMed and Google Scholar citations. His h-index is 140 Google Scholar citations and his number of citations are over 120,000 Google Scholar citations. He is a top-ranked author for publications in stroke and stroke therapy both by number and by citations in the last decade.Clavariate; Web of Science. He his on the list of "highly cited researchers" for several years.Clavariate; Web of Science .

On a private level

Werner Hacke is happily married for almost 50 years with his wife Monika Hacke, and father of two daughters, Dr. Nicola Zausig, a radiologist, and Stefanie Oellers, a lawyer, and he is now also a proud grandfather of four grandsons and one granddaughter. He enjoys travel and cruises, modern art, sports and golfing, good food and wine, reading science fiction and fantasy books, and listening to Hard Rock and Heavy Metal. He stopped riding his Harley Davidson V-Rod a few years ago.

References

1. Home [UK-Aachen]