Prof. em. Dr. Wolfgang Langhans

Wolfgang Langhans (WL) has been a professor at ETH Zurich from 1988 until his mandatory retirement in 2018. He received a DVM from the University of Munich 1981, was awarded the Hans Adolf Krebs Prize by the German Nutrition Society in 1982, and spent two months in 1983 at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in White Plains, NY, learning neurosurgical techniques. WL joined the Institute of Veterinary Physiology at the University of Zurich in 1983, where he completed habilitation in 1987. In a six-month sabbatical in 1996 at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD, he developed expertise in single unit electrophysiological recording. WL was Institute Head (1992 – 1993, 2006 – 2009), and Chair of D-AGRL (1997 – 1999). He acted as Dean of VETSUISSE (2003 - 2006) merging the Faculties of Veterinary Medicine in Zurich and Bern into a unified VETSUISSE Faculty. During this time, he continued to run his laboratory, but was relieved from teaching and administrative duties. WL was chair of a strategic planning committee for the establishment of the new department D-HEST at ETH Zurich (2010 – 2011) and founding Chair of this department (2012 – 2013). WL’s research focuses on the physiology and pathophysiology of the neuroendocrine control of eating and energy balance, including obesity and type II diabetes. He authored or coauthored more than 300 research articles and reviews. In 2017 WL received the Solomon A. Berson Award of the Endocrinology and Metabolism Section of the American Physiological Society (APS) and in 2018 the Distinguished Career Award of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB). WL is still actively involved in research and he still teaches at ETH and at the University of Zurich.