Her research interests include paediatrics, pediatric pneumology, allergology and epidemiology.
Since 2017, she has been the Director of the new Institute for Asthma and Allergy Prevention (IAP) at Helmholtz Center Munich.
[3][4] Erika von Mutius received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2013 for her basic insights into the causes of childhood lung diseases – in particular epidemiological studies on allergic asthma.
[5] She is one of the first allergy researchers who found out after the fall of the German wall in 1989/90 that in the GDR, despite the poorer environmental conditions caused by the air pollution, proportionately only half as many allergies existed as in the Federal Republic of Germany.
She also found that children who grow up in the countryside and who are in contact with animals have a lower risk of allergies.