Sara Nußbeck: “Making biobanks indispensable research partners” 

PD Dr. Sara Nußbeck is a molecular biologist with a habilitation in biobanking and medical informatics. She is the director of the Central Biobank at the University Medical Centre Göttingen (UMG), which she established. She is an expert reviewer for biobanks at the German Accreditation Body (DAkkS) and was conference chair of the National Biobank Symposium 2023. Nußbeck has been very active for GBN and GBA for a long time: she has been a member of the SC for many years, heads the “Education and Training” working group and is a member of three other working groups. Training biobank staff and mentoring young professionals are of particular interest to her. She also aims to make the biobanking community more visible at national and international level. 

Michael Kiehntopf: “Joint strategies for quality assured biobanking” 

He is one of the “architects” of the GBN quality programme: PD Dr. Dr. Michael Kiehntopf. The laboratory physician and biochemist heads both the Integrated Biobank Jena (IBBJ) and the Institute for Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Diagnostics at the University Hospital of Jena. He is also a member of the Board and Deputy Chairman of the Technology and Methods Platform for Networked Medical Research (TMF e. V.), spokesman for the TMF working group “Biobanks” and spokesman for the Biobanks and Informatics Section of the German Society for Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (DGKL). He established the GBA proficiency tests for liquid samples, is a long-standing member of the GBN and GBA SC and is involved in several working groups. His priorities are the expansion of the GBA proficiency testing activities – also on a European level –, the visibility of the successes of GBA biobanks and a cooperative and transparent collaboration.