Katharina Summermatter

Dr Katerin Summermatter Head of the Biosafety Center and Managing Director of the Biosafety Level 3 Laboratory at the Institute for Infectious Diseases at the University of Berne, Switzerland.

Member of Monkeypox IHR Emergency Committee 23 June 2022 to 4 October 2022.

Dr Kathrin Summermatter is the head of the Biosafety Center at the Institute for Infectious Diseases (IFIK) at the University of Bern. 

Dr Summermatter has been a biosafety expert for more than 20 years. From 2002-2019 she was the head of the biosafety department and the Deputy Director of the Institute of Virology and Immunology (IVI), the Swiss reference lab for highly contagious animal diseases (Biosafety Level 3 and 3Ag Laboratories). In addition, she was the coordinator of BIOSAFETY-Europe. She has been a long-standing member of the European Biosafety Association (EBSA) and the American Biosafety Association (ABSA). In 2003/2004 she was the president of EBSA. She is the acting chair of the International Veterinary Biosafety Workgroup and a board member of the Swiss Biosafety Network (SBNet).   

Dr Summermatter is currently a member of the WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO). 

Dr Kathrin Summermatter grew up in Valais. After attending college in Brig, she studied biology in Freiburg, did a doctorate in microbiology and then worked for the federal government on legislation for biosafety in laboratories. For 17 years she was head of the security department in the high-security laboratory in Mittelhausen; in July 2019 she founded the Biosafety Center of the IFIK.