Prof. Dr. Adelheid Cerwenka studied pharmacy in Vienna, Austria followed by a PhD in Immunology. In 1998, she joined the laboratory of Prof. Lewis Lanier as post-doctoral fellow at DNAX and UCSF, San Francisco, USA. After 2 years as group leader at Novartis, Austria, she was recruited as junior group leader to the German Cancer Center in Heidelberg. Since 2017 she is full professor and chair of Immunobiochemistry at Heidelberg University, Medical Faculty Mannheim, where she serves as Vice Dean of Research and as director of the Mannheim Institute for Innate Immunoscience. She is past president of the “Society of Natural Immunity”, SNI and speaker of the DFG-funded Research Training Group GRK2727 “Incheck”. Her research is focused on Natural Killer cell biology in cancer with a focus on harnessing NK receptors and desiphering the impact of tissue/tumor microenvironments.