Dr. Erik T. Frank

Emmy Noether research group leader at the Univer­sity of Würzburg

Erik T. Frank is Emmy Noether research group leader at the Univer­sity of Würzburg.

Erik T. Frank is an expert in behav­ioral ecology and evolu­tion. He researches how animals care for injuries – from ants that apply antimi­cro­bials on their wounds to combat infec­tions to chimpanzees that apply crushed flies on open wounds. To answer these questions, he employs behav­ioral exper­i­ments, micro­biome analy­ses, chemi­cal analy­ses, proteomic approaches, and theoret­i­cal modelling.

He is an advocate for science commu­ni­ca­tion and has acted as scien­tific adviser for landmark documen­taries like Life on Our Planet (Netflix), Sentient (National Geographic & Disney+) and Planet Insect (Curios­ity Stream). He has also written a popular science book about his research which was short­listed for the “science for all” prize in France in 2022.