Since 2013, Björn Schumacher is full professor and director of the Institute for Genome Stability in Ageing and Diseases (IGSAD) at the CECAD Research Centre of the University of Cologne. He received his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Munich and conducted his postdoctoral research as EMBO and Marie Curie fellow at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam. Professor Schumacher is President of the German Society for DNA Repair (DGDR), co-Director of the Minerva Center of the Biological Mechanisms of Healthy Ageing at Bar-Ilan University (IL), and between 2014 and 2020 served as President of the German Society for Ageing Research (DGfA). He was awarded with the Eva Luise Köhler Research Prize, the Innovation Prize of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the European Research Council (ERC) grant, coordinated the FP7 Marie Curie initial training network on chronic DNA damage in ageing (CodeAge) and serves on several editorial boards. His research interest focuses on the molecular mechanisms through which DNA damage contributes to cancer development and ageing-associated diseases. Employing the C. elegans system and mammalian disease models, his group uncovered cell-autonomous and systemic responses through which the organism adapts to accumulating DNA damage with ageing. Through the understanding of the basic mechanisms of genome instability-driven ageing, Schumacher aims to contribute to the development of future strategies to prevent ageing-associated diseases.