Ralf F. W. Bartenschlager (born 29 May 1958) is a German virologist who has been researching hepatitis C since 1989.
He is a professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases at the Heidelberg University.
After high school, he worked as a policemen for four years before starting his undergraduate in biology in 1981 at Heidelberg University.
[2] He conduced his thesis work with Heinz Schaller at the ZMBH in Heidelberg on the structure and functional role of the P-protein in Hepatitis B viruses.
After graduating in 1990, he continued working as a postdoc at Heidelberg University until joining Hoffmann-La Roche in 1991, where he began working on Hepatitis C.[3] Bartenschlager was a recipient of the 2016 Lasker Award for Clinical Research for discoveries related to hepatitis C virus, jointly with Charles M. Rice and Michael J.