Arturo Zychlinsky was appointed director of the Department of Cellular Microbiology at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in 2001. He studied biology at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Mexico D. F., Mexico (1980 - 1985). In 1991, he received his Ph.D. in Immunology from the Rockefeller University, New York, USA. Afterwards, he spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institut Pasteur, Paris, France. From 1993 - 2001 he was professor at the Skirball Institute and Department of Microbiology at the New York University School of Medicine.