Dr. Posch studied medicine at the Medical University of Vienna followed by clinical training in medicine and dermatology. Supported by a research award from the Austrian Academy of Science, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California San Francisco. Dr. Posch’s work focuses on melanoma signaling pathways and innovative approaches to targeted melanoma therapy. His previous studies have highlighted a critical role of the MAPK and PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathways for NRAS mutant melanoma maintenance. Furthermore, Dr. Posch investigated the use of gold-nanoparticles to improve targeted therapeutic efficacy in preclinical melanoma models. In 2014, he joined the Harvard Skin Disease Research Center within the Department of Dermatology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, to study novel mechanisms of melanoma immune evasion and neoplastic progression, with a particular focus on previously unrecognized, tumor growth-promoting roles of the programmed cell death 1 (PD-1) pathway in melanoma. For his work on this project, which was later published in the prestigious journal Cell, Dr. Posch received the 2014 Outrun the Sun Award. In 2018, Dr. Posch joined the Department for Dermatology and Allergy at the Technical University of Munich, Germany as the head of dermato-oncology. His current research focuses on melanomagenesis: How does a nevus transform into a melanoma?