Adelheid Cerwenka

Prof. Dr. Adelheid Cerwenka studied pharmacy in Vienna, Austria followed by a PhD in Immunology. After a post-doc at the Trudeau Institute, NY, USA (Mentors: Prof. Richard Dutton and Suzy Swain), she joined the Laboratory of Prof. Lewis Lanier at DNAX and UCSF, SF, USA, where she identified tumor expressed ligands for activating Natural Killer cell receptors. After 2 years as group leader at Novartis, Austria, she was recruited as junior group leader to the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany. Since 2017 she is full professor and chair of Immunobiochemistry at Heidelberg University, Medical Faculty Mannheim, where she serves as Vice Dean of Research. She is the current president of the “Society of Natural Immunity”, SNI and she previously coordinated the focus group “NK cells” of the German Society of Immunology. She is author of over 100 publications and her lab is funded by grants from local, national and international funding agencies. Her research is focused on gaining insight into basic NK cell biology with the goal of exploiting NK cell effector function in cancer and viral infections.