Prof. em. Dr. Michael Teuber

Michael Teuber was appointed Full Professor of Food Microbiology at the ETH Zurich in 1990. He retired on October 1st, 2002.

Awarded his doctorate in biology (Dr.rer.nat) by the University of Munich, Germany, Prof. Teuber spent the period from 1962 to 1970 as assistant and postdoc in the Bavarian State Institute of Soil Science; the Max von Pettenkofer Institute for Hygiene and Medicinal Microbiology of the University of Munich; the Department of Molecular Biology of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York; and the Chair for Microbiology of the Technical University of Munich, where he completed his habilitation in microbiology in 1971. From 1976 to1990 he served as director and professor at the Institute for Microbiology of the Federal Institute for Dairy Research in Kiel. In 1977 he was named Associate Professor at the Technical University of Munich, and in 1978 Honorary Professor at the University of Kiel. From 1989 to1993 he was president of the Commission for Science and Education of the International Dairy Federation in Brussels.

He was occupied with biochemistry, genetics, and the practical consequences of pathogenic as well as useful microorganisms in food. A focal point was the evaluation of genetically modified organisms in food, another is the spread of antibiotic-resistant germs in food. 1991 he was a member of the Central Commission for Biological Safety at the Robert Koch Institute, Berlin, and the "Novel Food" task force at the International Life Science Institute in Brussels; 1996 he became coordinator of the "Food Biotechnology" module of the SPP "Biotechnology" of the Swiss National Science Foundation.