She obtained her Ph.D. degree from the Marburg University and trained as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in G?ttingen, Germany (Professor Dr. D. Gallwitz) and at the University of Mainz (Professor Dr. R. E. Streeck). Following Habilitation (1999), she became the Head of the Hepatitis B Virus Research Group of the Collaborative Research Center 490, Mainz, Germany, which is funded by grants from the German Research Foundation. Her research activities cover many aspects of molecular and cellular virology with special emphasis on hepatitis B and D viruses. In particular, her current research focuses on virus/host interactions involved in virus entry and exit as well as in virus maturation and intracellular trafficking.