Record­ing of the Event Now Avail­able on YouTube

The 11th Science Evening of the Hector Fellow Academy took place on 21 May 2026 under the title “What Can We Learn from Children? The Future of Person­al­ized Medicine” at the Bavar­ian Academy of Sciences and Human­i­ties in Munich and via livestream. Organized in cooper­a­tion with LMU Univer­sity Hospi­tal, the event attracted strong inter­est both on site and online.

Children are not simply “small adults” — they experi­ence illness, health, and medical treat­ment in their own unique ways. A child-centered approach to medicine must take these perspec­tives seriously, listen to children’s voices, and respect their rights. How can insights from pediatric and adoles­cent medicine improve health­care for patients of all ages? Why is it impor­tant to actively involve children in decisions about their health? And what role can children’s rights play in shaping the future of person­al­ized medicine?

The scien­tific host of the evening was Christoph Klein, Profes­sor of Pediatrics and Adoles­cent Medicine and Medical Direc­tor of the Children’s Hospi­tal at the Dr. von Hauner Children’s Hospi­tal of Ludwig Maxim­il­ian Univer­sity of Munich.

In his lecture, Josef Penninger, Direc­tor of the Helmholtz Centre for Infec­tion Research in Braun­schweig and Profes­sor at the Medical Univer­sity of Vienna, focused on the close biolog­i­cal connec­tion between mother and child. He illus­trated how the mater­nal body adapts during pregnancy and breast­feed­ing in order to safeguard both mater­nal health and the optimal devel­op­ment of the child.

Christoph Klein then explained how insights gained from treat­ing rare child­hood diseases can contribute to advances in medicine more broadly. Children with rare diseases, he noted, are increas­ingly becom­ing pioneers of precise and individ­u­al­ized medicine — trans­form­ing from the “orphans of medicine” into impor­tant drivers of innov­a­tive thera­peu­tic approaches.

Another key perspec­tive was provided by Claudia Kittel, whose lecture addressed the rights of children and adoles­cents in the medical context. Refer­ring to the UN Conven­tion on the Rights of the Child, she empha­sized that children are rights holders from the very begin­ning of their lives. Involv­ing children and adoles­cents in decisions concern­ing their health is there­fore not only desir­able, but an oblig­a­tion — and an essen­tial step toward better medicine.

The subse­quent panel discus­sion brought together the speak­ers and three repre­sen­ta­tives of the Children and Youth Research Council of the Dr. von Hauner Children’s Hospi­tal. Together, they discussed how the perspec­tives, experi­ences, and opinions of young people can be more effec­tively integrated into medical practice in the future.

A record­ing of the event is now avail­able in German and English on the YouTube channel of the Hector Fellow Academy.

The next Science Evening of the Hector Fellow Academy will take place on 9 June 2027 in the ceremo­nial hall of the Neue Aula at the Univer­sity of Tübin­gen. The scien­tific host will be Bernhard Schölkopf, Direc­tor at the Max Planck Insti­tute for Intel­li­gent Systems, Profes­sor at ETH Zurich, and Found­ing Direc­tor of the ELLIS Insti­tute in Tübingen.