Manolis Pasparakis did his Ph.D. thesis work in the lab of Dr. George Kollias, where he studied the role of TNF in vivo by generating and analysing TNF knockout mice. He received his Ph.D. in 1997 from the University of Athens. He did his postdoctoral training in the lab of Professor Klaus Rajewsky at the Institute of Genetics, University of Cologne, Germany, where he studied the role of IKK subunits in vivo by generating and analyzing conditional knockout mice. After his postdoctoral studies he worked between 2002 and 2005 as a group leader at the EMBL Mouse Biology Unit, Monterotondo, Italy, where his group generated a number of conditional knockout mouse strains and used them to dissect in vivo the role of IKK/NF-kB signalling in inflammatory conditions of the skin, the liver and the gastrointestinal tract. Since 2005 he is a Professor at the Institute of Genetics, University of Cologne. His research focuses on studying the function of the IKK/NF-kB pathway and of TNFR and TLR signalling in the pathogenesis of inflammatory diseases and cancer.