Barbara Hoffmann graduated from the Medical School of Aachen, Germany, in 1993, where she also received a doctoral degree in Lung Physiology in 1996. She worked in Pulmonary and Internal Medicine before she studied Public Health and received an MPH from the School of Public Health in Bielefeld, Germany. From 2001 to 2011, she worked at the Institute of Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology, Medical School of the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, where she founded and developed the Unit of Environmental Epidemiology and Clinical Epidemiology. She was a visiting scientist at Harvard University from 2008 to 2014. Since 2011 she is Professor of Environmental Epidemiology at the Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany. Her research focuses on the investigation of acute and chronic cardiopulmonary, metabolic and neurological health effects of air pollution and noise.
Barbara is Chair of the ERS Advocacy Council (2023-2026) and has chaired the ERS Environment and Health Committee. She is also a founding member and past chair of the ISEE Europe Chapter. She is engaged in European policy making and aims to bring scientific evidence to the policy making process.