Jakov developed the Bochum SALUS project together with Matthé and directs the research group, coordinating and supervising all subprojects. As a psychiatrist and clinical ethicist, he brings clinical experience and psychiatric and ethical expertise to the research group. He is involved in designing and carrying out quantitative and qualitative empirical studies as well as in analyzing the data and interpreting the results.

Jakov studied medicine and philosophy in Mainz, Bern and Bochum and was a visiting scholar at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam. He coordinates the working group “Ethics in Psychiatry” at the Academy for Ethics in Medicine (AEM) and is a member of the commission “Ethics and Law” of the German Association for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics (DGPPN) and the institutional review board of the medical faculty of the Ruhr University Bochum.

His research interests include coercion in psychiatry, psychiatric advance directives, competence to consent, and ethical aspects of research with persons under involuntary commitment.