Almudena Ramiro was born in Madrid in 1971 and obtained her BSc degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the Universidad Autónoma d Madrid in 1994. She received her PhD with First Class Honours from the same University in 2000. In 2001 she joined M. Nussenzweig’s Laboratory at Rockefeller University in New York (USA) as a Postdoctoral Fellow funded by the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia. During this time she focused on the function of Activation Induced Deaminase (AID) in the diversification of antibodies and established the role of AID role in the initiation of lymphomagenic chromosome translocations. This work was published in leading journals and is widely recognised within the field. Ramiro has been a Ramón y Cajal investigator since 2004. She received the 2006 Biogen Idec Award for Young Investigators for her work on the role of genomic instability and p53 in AID-induced c-myc/IgH translocations. In 2007 Ramiro was awarded a European Research Council Starting Grant.