Anja Ehrhardt studied biology at the Universities Göttingen and Hamburg in Germany and performed her Ph.D. at the Fraunhofer Insitute of Toxicology and Aerosol Research in Germany. From 1999-2005 she was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University focusing on adenovirus and gene therapy. In 2005, she became a group leader at LMU Munich, Germany. Since 2011 she has been a full professor and chair of Medical Microbiology at the Private University Witten/Herdecke in Germany.