Joerg Heineke is an MD by training and conducted clinical rotations in cardiology before focusing on cardiovascular research. He did his post-doc with Jeff Molkentin in Cincinnati from 2004-2008. From 2012-2017 he was Heisenberg Professor for Experimental Cardiology at Hannover Medical School, Germany. In 2017 he became full Professor and Department Head of Cardiovascular Research and then in 2019 Director and full Professor of the Department Cardiovascular Physiology at the Mannheim Medical Faculty of Heidelberg University, Germany. His research focuses on elucidating the molecular mechanisms of heart failure and cardiac regeneration, especially with regard to inter-organ and inter-cellular cross-talk, transcriptional regulation and protein-synthesis regulation