The University Clinic of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich, Germany is one of the largest clinics in Germany dedicated to the improvement of human health through patient care, research, education and training.

The Institute of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine of the Medical Centre of the University provides patent care and treatment for infectious and tropical disease, travel medicine advice, tropical medical diagnostics and consultancies. The international Clinical Trial Units within the Institute has been involved since decades in infectious disease research worldwide, focusing on HIV, TB, COVID-19 and tropical diseases, including basic research in the fields of immunology, virology, microbiology, host genomics and computational analysis. Throughout the Center for International Health (CIH LMU) we provide career development (PhD, master, tropical disease courses) on an international scale.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Institute has developed and conducted cohort studies (KoCo19) and basic research activities in Germany, as well as in collaboration with the Jimma University Medical Center (JUMC) in SARS-CoV-2 seroepidemiological studies (COVID-19 SeroStudy) in Ethiopia. Throughout this research we focus in the context of evolving viral strains on immunological surrogates of SARS-CoV-2 immune protection and COVID-19 breakthrough infections in Ethiopian populations, that for the majority have been pre-exposed to SARS-CoV-2.