Stefan Pfister is Director of the Hopp Children's Cancer Center Heidelberg (KiTZ), Head of Department at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and Senior Physician at Heidelberg University Hospital (UKHD). By identifying characteristic epigenetic patterns, he made a decisive contribution to the development of a diagnostic procedure for childhood brain tumors, which has since been widely adopted in the classifications of the World Health Organization (WHO).
His awards include the German Cancer Prize 2013 and the Léopold Griffuel Award 2021. In 2020, he was elected as a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and in 2022 as a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). In 2023, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation, the most prestigious science prize in Germany.
