Susanne Foitzik is an evolutionary biologist, behavioral scientist, and international authority on ants. After completing her PhD in ant evolution and behavior and conducting postdoctoral 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.