Prof. Dr. Frauke Nees
Director of the Institute of Medical Psychology and Professor of Medical Psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich
Office address:
Goethestr. 31
Room H 2.07
Prof. Dr. Frauke Nees is Director of the Institute of Medical Psychology and Professor of Medical Psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich.
From 2020–2025, she served as Director of the Institute of Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology at the University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein, and as Professor of Medical Psychology and Behavioural Neurobiology at Kiel University. She received her PhD from the University of Trier, supported by fellowships from the Nikolaus-Koch Foundation and the DFG-funded International Research Training Group between 2005 and 2008.
She subsequently worked as a Research Group Leader, Deputy Professor, and permanent Deputy of the Scientific Director at the Institute of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience at the Central Institute of Mental Health (CIMH) Mannheim, Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University (2008–2020), where she also held a Heisenberg fellowship funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) from 2018 to 2020. From 2015 to 2017, she worked clinically as a PostDoc at the Medical University of Vienna and at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at CIMH.
Her research is situated at the interface between brain and behavior and focuses on behavioral medicine and neuropsychobiological mechanisms of learning, memory, and processing of pain and stress across the lifespan. She bridges basic science with applied prevention and rehabilitation research, incorporating digital tools such as smartphone apps and virtual reality for various mental, somatic, and neurological disorders.
A key focus is translating scientific findings into clinical practice – for example, through the development and implementation of evidence-based interventions to improve mental health, pain regulation, and stress management in diverse healthcare settings. She also actively supports the development of clinical interfaces, ensuring that clinical contexts and the perspectives of both practitioners and patients are systematically integrated into the application process.
She is continuously involved in supervising PhD, medical doctoral, and PostDoc projects, serves on several expert panels and review boards (e.g., DFG, ERAB, FWO, NWO Veni/Vidi, ERC), is active in gender equality committees (e.g., at Kiel University), and contributes to national and international graduate schools and competitive third-party funded projects as Principal Investigator.