Kurt Zatloukal, M.D.  is professor of pathology at the Medical University of Graz, Austria and is head of the Diagnostic and Research Center for Molecular Biomedicine. His research focusses on molecular pathology of diseases as well as biobanking and related technologies. He coordinated the preparatory phase of the European biobanking and biomolecular research infrastructure (BBMRI) within the 7th EU framework programme and is heading the Austrian national node BBMRI.at. Furthermore, he led in the FP7-funded large integrated project SPIDIA the development of new European standards and norms for pre-analytical processing of tissue samples for molecular testing.
He is member of the scientific board for genetic testing and human gene therapy at the Austrian Ministry of Health, and member of the Austrian Standards Institute. He was member of the OECD task force on biological resource centres and the Roadmap Working Group of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures. Moreover, he contributed to the OECD best practice guidelines for biological resource centres, the regulations for genetic testing of the Austrian Gene Technology Law, and was member of the Bioethics Commission at the Austrian Federal Chancellery. He has published 387 scientific papers and was co-inventor of 25 patent applications.