Werner Hacke was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Neurology at the University of Heidelberg in Germany from 1987 until 2014. He now is a Senior Professor of Neurology at Heidelberg University. He was the founding President (now honorary President) of the European Stroke Organisation. He is a past president of the German Neurological Society, the German Stroke Society and the German Interdisciplinary Society of Intensive Care Medicine.
He received his neurology training at the University of Aachen, Germany and at the University of Bern, Switzerland. After spending one year as visiting scientist at the Scripps Research Foundation in La Jolla, California, he took the Chair of Neurology at Heidelberg in 1987.
His main scientific and clinical interest is in Acute Stroke, Critical Care Neurology and in Stroke Prevention. He has pioneered the field of thrombolysis for acute stroke and initiated several new management options for large infarctions including hypothermia and decompressive surgery.
In 1998, he was the first European recipient of the Feinberg Award for Excellence in Stroke Research, given by the American Stroke Association and the first recipient of the Karolinska Stroke Award in 2004. He was awarded the Nonne-Medal, the highest award of the German Neurological Society in 2008. He received the President’s Award by the World Stroke Organisation (2008), the Mihara Award by the Mihara Foundation (Japan, 2009), the Jarecki Award (USA, 2009) and the Wepfer Award of the ESC in 2013.
Prof. Hacke is honorary member of several national societies of Neurology, including the German Neurological Society, the German Stroke Society, the German Society of Neuroradiology, American Neurological Association (ANA), the Pan Russian Society of Neurology and the French Neurological Society, and holds an honorary doctorate in Tblisi, Georgia. In 2005, he was named European editor of Stroke.
He was chair of the steering committees of several acute treatment and secondary prevention trials including ECASS I-III, SPACE, CHARISMA, AbESTT I and II, DIAS and DIAS II, DESTINY I and II, and others.
Prof. Hacke has published 350 original articles listed in pubmed and SCI. He is the scientist with the highest citation rate (>38,000) in the field of Stroke and Vascular Neurology (h-index 91 (web of science) resp. 108 (google scholar)).