Kathrin Jansen is senior vice-president and head of vaccine research and development at Pfizer, Inc. and notably, helped orchestrate the record-time creation of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Born in 1958, she grew up in Germany where her fascination with medicine began. She was often ill as a child, which is the reason why she decided to make medicine her life’s work. She received her doctoral degree in microbiology, biochemistry, and genetics from Philipps University of Marburg in Germany and completed her postdoctoral training at Cornell University in the U.S. After earning her Ph.D. in 1984, she worked at Massachusetts General Hospital before moving to Geneva’s Glaxo Institute for Molecular Biology to focus on drug development.
When she returned to the United States in 1992, Jansen joined the American pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co after a friend sent her a job opening in the company’s vaccine division. In 2006, she joined Merck’s competitor Wyeth, which her present employer Pfizer acquired a few years later.
Over her multi-decade career, she has led the research and development of two major vaccines: one against human papilloma virus and the other pneumococcus, with the COVID-19 vaccine being her third major achievement. “If you have a scientific intuition and you’re careful with your experimentation, at the end, you have to follow your gut and not let naysayers derail you,” she once explained.
There’s no doubt that Kathrin Jansen is someone who will leave a mark in science and global healthcare. Her deep-rooted passion and laser-sharp focus on developing therapies that help millions of people have clearly been the keys to her success.
When one remembers that fewer than 30% of the world’s scientific researchers are female, Jansen’s career path and commitment to science are a real inspiration for women wishing to follow in her footsteps.