Prof. Stellbrink studies medicine at the University of Hamburg, Germany from 1982 to 1988. During his studies he spent some visiting rotations at the University of Washington, Seattle, and Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA. He was trained in cardiology at the Rheinisch-WestfälischeTechnische Hochschule in Aachen, Germany and in 1996 for a short clinical research training period at the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany. Since 2005, he is Chief of Cardiology at the Department of Cardiology and Intensive Care Medicine in Bielefeld, Germany (teaching hospital of the Westfälische Wilhelms Universität Münster, Germany). His main focus of clinical work and research is device therapy for heart failure and arrhythmias, catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation, device therapy in sleep apnea and alcohol septal ablation in hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy.