Erika von Mutius is head of the Asthma and Allergy Department of Munich University Children’s Hospital in Munich, Germany. Professor von Mutius completed her internship and residency training in the Department of General Pediatrics, Neonatal and Pediatric Intensive Care at this hospital. From 1992-1993 she was a research fellow at the Respiratory Sciences Center at the University of Arizona, Tucson, USA, with Professor Fernando Martinez, and also received training in Clinical Effectiveness at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, USA. In 2004 she was appointed as Professor of Pediatrics at Ludwig-Maximilians- Universität, Munich, one of only three Centres of Excellence in Germany. Her research interests have been focused on the epidemiology of paediatric respiratory and allergic diseases for many years. She has worked in several multicentre and interdisciplinary projects addressing the potential role of genetic and environmental determinants of atopic illnesses and has a  20 year experience with design, implementation and data analysis of large multicentre epidemiological studies on paediatric respiratory diseases and allergies, including birth cohort studies.??Professor von Mutius has been the recipient of several prestigious awards. She serves on a number of international committees and is an active editorial board member of national and international journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.