Institute of Hygiene and Environmental Medicine, Charité – University Medicine Berlin
After specialization in hygiene and environmental medicine, Petra Gastmeier worked from 1991 to 2000 as a hospital epidemiologist in Potsdam and the university hospital of the Free University Berlin. During this time, she created the German national surveillance system for healthcare associated infections (KISS) with meanwhile more than 1300 participating hospitals. From 2001 to 2007, she was Associated Professor of Hospital Epidemiology at Hanover Medical University. Since 2008, she is Full Professor for Hygiene and Environmental Medicine at Charité –University Medicine in Berlin.
Her research focuses on the investigation of the epidemiology of healthcare associated infections, multiresistant organisms and antibiotic usage in hospitals and the community. . She also established the German national hand hygiene campaign, which is meanwhile running for more than 10 years, and the outbreak database platform for identifying sources and appropriate intervention measures during outbreaks of nosocomial infections. In 2015, she received the Robert Koch Award for Hospital Epidemiology. Petra Gastmeier is author or co-author of more than 400 articles in the field of hospital epidemiology and infection control.