Appointed Director

Richard Schäfer, MD, FRSB, is a professor and medical director of transfusion medicine at the Institute for Transfusion Medicine and Gene Therapy of the Medical Center of the University of Freiburg. He was previously appointed as an assistant professor of transfusion medicine at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He is also a member of the Center for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, and he was elected as Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology.

Schäfer's research is driven by questions of basic and translational science. He has authored more than 80 peer-reviewed publications in the fields of stem cell biology, clinical cellular therapies and transfusion medicine. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Translational Medicine, and an editorial advisor for BMC Medicine. He also serves on the editorial boards of several other international peer-reviewed journals. In addition to his scientific work, he has a strong interest in teaching and in developing novel teaching formats.

At AABB, he is currently serving as at-large director on the AABB Board of Directors, as member of the Standards, Accreditation and Regulatory Council, and as AABB-ISCT,  International Society for Cell and Gene Therapy human platelet lysate joint working group co-leader. He has also served as the secretary of the Cellular Therapies Section Coordinating Committee (CTSCC), the CTSCC liaison to the Annual Meeting Education Committee, and as co-leader of the Novel Therapies and Cellular Therapies Product Development Subsection.

He has been actively involved in planning for AABB's annual meetings, including pre-meeting workshops, sessions and committee meetings. He is also member of the International Society of Cellular Therapy, the German Society of Transfusion Medicine and Immunohematology, the European Academy of Tumor Immunology and the German Stem Cell Network.

A graduate from Heidelberg University, Schäfer completed his training in internal medicine and transfusion medicine at Tübingen University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology and visiting assistant professor at Stanford University.