Prof Daiana Stolz graduated from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, in 1997 and completed her clinical training in internal and pulmonary medicine in Germany, Switzerland, and the USA. She received a master’s degree in quantitative methods and public health from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, USA, in 2008 and was appointed Professor of Respiratory Medicine by the University of Basel in 2016. She has been a leading physician at University Hospital Basel (USB) since 2009. She is a fellow of both the American College of Chest Physicians and the European Respiratory Society (ERS). Prof Stolz leads a translational research group on inflammatory airway diseases at USB and has authored more than 200 publications in peer-reviewed journals, including several studies on pulmonary and systemic biomarkers for the characterization of patients with COPD. She is a member of the editorial boards of the European Respiratory Journal and Chest and is the immediate past Chair of the ERS Education Council.