Rosita Kammler new President of ESBB

At last week’s ESBB General Assembly, Rosita Kammler was inaugurated as new ESBB President. She had already served ESBB as Vice-President for two years, and will now lead ESBB with immediate effect.  ESBB warmly welcomes and congratulates Rosita Kammler in her new position as ESBB President. 

The hand-over from the former President during this extraordinary General Assembly was due to the nomination of Prof. Jens K. Habermann as new Director General of BBMRI-ERIC. ESBB sincerely thanks Prof. Habermann for his dedication for ESBB during his two-year term of presidency and wholeheartedly congratulates him to his new position. 

Rosita Kammler heads the Translational Research Coordination at the International Breast Cancer Study Group (IBCSG) and the European Thoracic Oncology Platform (ETOP). Her work has revolved around clinical trial biobanking, translational research coordination and project management for the past 18 years. She has provided expertise and leadership for designing, building and conducting the translational research programs and biobanks for IBCSG and ETOP, enabling state-of-the-art oncology research. She is responsible for ensuring that trial biosamples and associated data meet the objectives for quality, quantity, ethical use, to ensure the integrity of research data and analysis. These biobanks have been a critical resource for the more than 50 translational research studies conducted by IBCSG/ETOP, including the ETOP Lungscape and Mesoscape iBiobanks. The Lungscape iBiobank was voted first runner up of the Research Biobank of Year Contest at the ESBB Annual Meeting 2014 in Leipzig.  

Rosita has lived in many countries, from Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, France, USA, Germany, and Switzerland and thus naturally brings in a global perspective to biobanking and advancing collaborative research across the international arena. Rosita has been a long-time member of ESBB and ISBER and has been part of the annual biobanking conference program committees since the ESBB Annual Meeting in London, 2015. 

As ESBB President, Rosita is determined to guide ESBB, together with the ESBB Council, and reinforce the ESBB vision and implement greater value for its members, by ensuring that needs and interest are met for biobankers, and our partners.  

Rosita’s vision as ESBB President is to identify and overcome barriers to meet ESBB’s priorities of promoting biosharing, education, research and innovation. And together with the ESBB leadership, strengthen the professional network for our members, supporting excellence throughout our biobanking field, and closely collaborate with other partners and research infrastructures.

“It is a great honor and privilege to serve ESBB, a remarkable and diverse member-based community of biobanking, research and industry professionals, representing a large number of countries and backgrounds, biobanks, organizations and companies. ESBB is able to successfully disseminate relevant biobanking information and research at its conferences, symposiums, webinars, working groups and task forces. ESBB shapes the future of biosharing.”  said Rosita Kammler

ESBB is deeply grateful for Prof. Habermanns’s exceptional commitment to ESBB these past years and count ESBB greatly privileged and honored to have had him as President. 

Prof. Habermann will take office at BBMRI-ERIC in Graz on September 1st, 2020. BBMRI-ERIC, the Biobanking and BioMolecular resources Research Infrastructure – European Research Infrastructure Consortium, is to one of the biggest ERICs in the biomedical field, with 21 members: 17 member states and four observers, including IARC (WHO). In partnership, BBMRI-ERIC and ESBB organize the Europe Biobank Week (#EBW20), which will be held virtually this year from November 17 - 20, 2020 (http://europebiobankweek.eu).