Tim Sparwasser studied human medicine at the Johannes-Gutenberg-University Mainz and the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (LMU). After his doctorate he continued his research activities at the Institute for Medical Microbiology, Immunology and Hygiene (MIH) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and afterwards at the Skirball Institute as Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Postdoctoral Fellow in New York. After his habilitation in 2008 he became director of the Institute of Infection Immunology at Twincore (Center for Experimental and Clinical Infection Research) a joint venture of the Hannover Medical School and the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research. In 2018, he followed a call from the University of Mainz and became director of the Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene (IMMH) after he had declined a corresponding call from the Technical University of Dresden in 2017. Since 2014 he is a council member of the German Society of Immunology (DGfI). Since 2018, he is a member of the steering committee of the Research Center for Immunotherapy (FZI) at the University of Mainz. In 2019 he was elected as German representative to the Council of the International Union of Immunology Societies (IUIS).