Katharina Willmann graduated in Biology at Heidelberg University (Germany) and holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Immunology awarded by UCL (London, UK) in 2012. Katharina has 14 years of pre- and post-doctoral international research experience in immunology and molecular medicine, in Germany, UK, Austria & Portugal. Her research interests developed from biochemistry of antibody diversification over human immunology towards systems biology of inflammatory diseases. Katharina's PhD work at CRUK London Research Institute has led to new insights on the enzyme Activation Induced Deaminase (AID) in Antibody Diversification (1 resulting first-author peer-reviewed publication, 1 book chapter). In her postdoctoral work at CeMM, Vienna, she worked on the molecular mechanisms of Primary Immunodeficiencies, studying hitherto uncharacterized rare patients by human genetics, immunological and biochemical methods (2 resulting first author and 1 co-author peer-reviewed publications). She also developed systematic approaches to immune disorders using proteomics, haploid and CRISPR/Cas9 forward genetic screens (1 resulting first author and 1 co-author peer-reviewed publications). At Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC), Portugal, she studies tissue damage control/disease tolerance pathways with L. Moita, MD PhD (1 resulting first author and 3 resulting co-author peer reviewed publication). She was awarded a Portuguese FCT CEEC individual researcher position to study the role of candidate molecular mediators of cytoprotection, and an Exploratory Research Grant from FCT to study mitochondrial uncoupling in the pathogenesis of sepsis. Overall, since obtaining her University degree, she has published 10 papers in international peer-reviewed journals with an accumulated IF of 93 (Web of Science) and with 498 citations; h-index=7 (Google Scholar). Of these, 5 were published as first author (2012-2024), and 8 were published in the top 9% journals in their research field. She is certified by DGAV to work with animal models and to coordinate preclinical animal projects. Until present, she has co-supervised 2 PhD students, taught in 1 PhD program course, served as invited reviewer for 2 Journals, is organizer of 1 scientific conference, and initiated several interdisciplinary collaborations (Proteomics: André Müller, Head of Proteomics and Metabolomics, CeMM, Vienna; Genetic DNA instability disorders: Dr. Joanna Loizou, Medical University Vienna, Clinical: Prof. Pedro Póvoa, CHRC, HSFX, Lisbon). Throughout her career, she was recognised with a Cancer Research UK predoctoral fellowship, an Austrian FWF Lise Meitner Individual Post-doctoral Fellowship, and secured 1 research grant as PI (funded by FCT) and 1 as co-Investigator funded by the Austrian OeNB. Moreover, she was selected to talk at 1 national and 2 international scientific meetings and obtained 3 conference prizes.