Vanessa Pfiffer gained her Bachelor's degree in Biology at Freie Universität Berlin and expanded her studies with a Master's degree concentrating on molecular and cell biology. Writing her dissertation at the Max Delbrück Centre for Molecular Medicine (Berlin-Buch), she investigated mitochondrial defects using induced pluripotent stem cell technology.
Since 2014, Vanessa Pfiffer has been a research associate at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in Prof. Dr. Regine Hengge's team and is a doctoral candidate. Through genetic analysis of complex structured macrocolonies of the Escherichi coli organism, her work contributes to the further understanding of the c-di-GMP signalling network, which induces biofilm formation.