In 2001, he moved to the USA, working as a postdoctoral researcher at Boston University, then at UMass Chan Medical School, where he held his first professorship. In 2010, he returned to Germany and founded the Institute for Innate Immunity at the University Hospital Bonn. He became Scientific Director of the German Rheumatism Research Centre Berlin, a Leibniz Institute, and Professor of Experimental Rheumatology at the Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin in 2023. His research interests concern how the innate immune system maintains health and under what circumstances it can promote disease. In particular, he investigates the molecular mechanisms that lead to activation or inhibition of the immune system and how these influence the inflammatory reactions in various diseases, such as rheumatic diseases, arteriosclerosis or Alzheimer’s disease.

Prof. Dr. Latz is spokesperson of the Collaborative Research Centre “Metaflammation and Cellular Programming” (SFB 1454) and was previously co-spokesperson of the Cluster of Excellence “ImmunoSensation²”, both at the University of Bonn. He has also co-founded several biotech companies, including IFM Therapeutics (2017), Dioscure Therapeutics (2020), a ‘Stealth’ biotech’ (2020), and Odyssey Therapeutics (2021), which translate his discoveries into novel therapeutics and preventive approaches. He has been a highly cited scientist in immunology since 2014 having published more than 300 publications. Prof. Dr. Latz was elected as a member of the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina) in 2016 and has received a number of prestigious awards, including the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2018.