Gérard Krause

After obtaining a doctoral degree in tropical medicine at the University of Heidelberg and several stints as medical doctor and specialist in tropical medicine, Krause moved in 2000 to the Robert Koch Institute, where he worked as an epidemiologist. In 2005 he obtained his habilitation at the Charité in the fields of epidemiology and hygiene. He participated in the successful containment of the Western African Ebola virus epidemic of 2014/2015. As of 2017, he led the SORMAS (Surveillance, Outbreak Response Management and Analysis System) project at the HZI. SORMAS is an open source software for early recording of infectious diseases (that is, surveillance) and the steering of subsequent pandemic protection measures. It was later rolled out in other countries including France, Switzerland and Fiji, performing infection surveillance for more than 270 million people.

The SORMAS software was extended during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany by a module specifically tailored to the disease, and was expected to help reduce the effort in contact tracing and follow-up of infection chains by health authorities at the district level.