Prof. Dr. med. Stephan Achenbach graduated from Medical School at  Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany in 1993 and subsequently completed his training in Internal Medicine and Cardiology at the associated university hospital. In 2002/2003, he was a research fellow at the Department of Radiology and Cardiology Division, Massachusetts General Hospital. Since 2012, he is the Chairman of the Department of Cardiology and Professor of Medicine at the University of Erlangen, Germany.  His main clinical interests are interventional cardiology, general cardiology as well as cardiac imaging. His research is focused on cardiac interventions and cardiac imaging with a special focus on computed tomography of the heart and the use of imaging to support coronary and structural interventional procedures.

Stephan Achenbach was the Founding President of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography. He has been Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography. He is the President of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) for the mandate 2020 to 2022. Academic awards include the Jan Brod Award for Clinical Research of the Medical School of Hannover, Germany (1999), the Thomas C. Cesario Distinguished Visiting Professorship Award, University of California Irvine School of Medicine (2007), the Simon Dack Award, American College of Cardiology (2009), the Gold Medal of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (2015),  the Sir Godfrey Hounsfield Award of the British Institute of Radiology (2016), the Pioneer Award in Cardiovascular Computed Tomography, Society for Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (2019) and the Fritz Acker Award, German Society of Cardiology (2020). In 2017, he was selected by AuntMinnie.com as the “Most Influential Radiology Researcher” and he has repeatedly received the 1st Prize Best Teaching Award, Clinical Medicine, Medical Faculty of the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019).