Stefan M. Pfister, MD serves as Director of the Hopp Children´s Cancer Center (KiTZ), a joint venture between the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and Heidelberg University Hospital. As one of three founding directors, he has played a pivotal role in establishing this new pediatric comprehensive cancer center, reflecting his desire to further expand the direct integration of childhood cancer research with clinical care.He has led the Division of Pediatric Neurooncology at the DKFZ since 2012. After receiving his MD from Tübingen University, and his clinical education at Mannheim and Heidelberg University Hospitals, he completed postdoctoral fellowships at the Dana-Faber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School, and with Peter Lichter at the DKFZ. Pfister´s research is focused on the genetic and epigenetic characterization of childhood brain tumors, the development of faithful models through a better understanding of their cellular origin, and the preclinical testing of new treatment options using these models. He has taken leadership roles in large-scale international collaborations such as the International Cancer Genome Consortium and the pharma-academia collaborative pre-clinical network ‘ITCC-P4’. His enthusiastic leadership of several multinational personalized medicine studies and the impact of his work on the 2021 WHO classification of CNS Tumors illustrates his strong desire to translate research into care. The work of his team has resulted in more than 400 original publications over the past 10 years. Since 2020, Pfister is Member of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. For his translational neurooncology projects, Pfister has received several renowned scientific prizes, including the German Cancer Award in 2013 and the Léopold Griffuel Award in 2021.