Hans Konrad Biesalski

Professor Emeritus

Prof. (Emeritus) Dr. med. Hans Konrad Biesalski led the Institute for Biological Chemistry and Nutrition from 1994 to 2016 and served as the director of the Food Security Center (FSC) at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart from 2013 to 2017.
He has over 30 years of experience in research on retinoids and their impact on cell growth and differentiation, vitamin A, and human health, particularly lung diseases. Initially, his research focused on antioxidants and vitamins in basic and applied studies on reactive oxygen species and their role in human nutrition. Since 2010, he has been working on food quality as an indicator of adequate and healthy nutrition and micronutrients in human health and disease. As a Principal Investigator of nutrition studies in developing countries, he examined the impact of DDT on vitamin A status in refugee camps, as well as nutrition and food quality, including RUF (ready-to-use food), in countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Samoa.
He has also developed IT-based programs with specific scoring systems to detect malnutrition and micronutrient intake in various groups (children, pregnant women, elderly, cancer patients); these programs are used in different studies to assess individual nutritional status and control intervention trials. He published 325 peer-reviewed articles.
He is a member of various international societies and advisory groups, such as the WHO/FAO Expert Group on the Application of Nanotechnologies in the Food and Agriculture Sectors (Potential Food Safety Implications), the FAO/WHO BOND Initiative (Biomarker of Nutritional Deficiencies), and the High-Level Panel of the Expert Group of the Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition.
He has received numerous awards and honours. In 2007, he was elected fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin. In 2017, he received the prestigious Justus von Liebig Award for World Nutrition for his commitment to combating hunger and rural poverty, in the same year the prize of the German Society for Vitamin Research for his life's work and in 2019 the Konrad Lang Medal of the German Society for Nutritional Medicine.
His new textbook “From Ancient Diets to Modern Minds – The Role of Micronutrients for Brain Development and Function (Springer 2025)” explores aspects of diet, evolution, and longevity.