Susanne Foitzik is an evolutionary biologist, behavioral scientist, and international authority on ants. After completing her PhD in ant evolution and behavior and conducting post-doctoral work in the US, she became a professor at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. She now holds a chair at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, where she studies the behaviors and social evolution of ants, with a particular focus on slavemaking ants. Her findings have been published in more than 110 scientific papers.