Hedda Wardemann
Hedda Wardemann is Head of the Division of B Cell Immunology at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany, and Professor at the Medical Faculty of the University of Heidelberg since 2014.
Hedda obtained a PhD in Biology from the Albert-Ludwig University in Freiburg based on studies performed the Max Planck Institute for Immunobiology. In 2002, she joined the Laboratory of Molecular Immunology (M.C. Nussenzweig) at the Rockefeller University in New York, USA as postdoctoral fellow and subsequently Assistant Professor. In 2006, Hedda returned to Germany to lead an Independent Max Planck Research Group at the Max Planck Institute of Infection Biology in Berlin. From 2023–2025, she joined the Gates Foundation as Deputy Director in Discovery and Translational Sciences leading the Vaccines & Biologics domain to develop solutions to global health inequity.
Hedda is a human immunologist with a primary interest in B cell responses and antibodies in health and disease focusing on infectious diseases and cancer. The overarching goal is to gain fundamental insights in the molecular and cellular principles that underlie protective immune responses and to translate the findings into clinical application. Her laboratory has developed and uses a single-cell immunoglobulin gene and T cell receptor repertoire platform to measure the diversity and to track the clonal evolution of human and murine B and T cells at functional monoclonal level. By combining this approach with diverse immune phenotyping technologies, her laboratory gains fundamental insights into how antigen-receptor specificity links to cell differentiation and uses this knowledge to develop strategies to prevent and treat disease.
Hedda Wardemann is an elected member of the EMBO, Academia Europaea, Henry-Kunkel Society, and Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. She also serves on the Editorial Board of several journals and is a member of the European B Cell Network and the IUIS Vaccine Committee.
Abstracts this author is presenting: