Volker Dötsch obtained a diploma in chemistry from the University in Göttingen in 1990 where he worked with Thomas Jovin. In 1994 he obtained his PhD from the ETH in Zürich under the direction of Kurt Wüthrich. He was an EMBO postdoctoral fellow from 1994 to 1998 with Gerhard Wagner at Harvard Medical School, Boston. In 1998 he started his independent career at UCSF in San Francisco, focusing on the development of in-cell NMR. In 2003 he moved as full professor to the Goethe University in Frankfurt where he focuses on the investigation of structure and function of biological macromolecules using NMR and other techniques. Of particular interest is the p53 protein family as well as proteins involved in autophagy and the development of tools for studying the structure of membrane proteins using cell-free protein synthesis and NMR spectroscopy.