Dr. Hanna Heikenwälder, born on 1 April 1986 in Bad Oldesloe in Schleswig-Holstein, grew up south of Munich at Lake Starnberg. She studied molecular biology in Lübeck, the USA and at ETH Zurich before completing her doctorate at the Technical University of Munich on the links between inflammation and cancer development in the intestines. She then went on to research personalised treatment approaches for pancreatic cancer at the University of Heidelberg's surgical clinic and studied medicine for several semesters to improve her knowledge of anatomy. She is currently conducting research on cancer and ageing at the University of Tübingen. In her non-fiction books, she writes about the major scientific and socially relevant topics of our time. She lives with her family in Tübingen.