Thomas Schmidt is a specialist in general and visceral surgery, as well as special visceral surgery. He comes from Heidelberg University Hospital, where he was the first senior physician in clinic management and head of the section Oberer Gastrointestinal Tract, as well as deputy section head of “Oncological Surgery”. Since 2014, he has been head of a clinical working group with a focus on the esophagus and stomach. His scientific interest lies primarily in the microenvironment of tumors and metastases. To this end, he has headed the basic scientific working group “Tumor and Metastasis Microenvironment” since 2012 and received the renowned Ernst Jung Career Funding Prize for this work. He was appointed to the W2 professorship “Oncological Surgery” by the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Cologne in 2021.