ECL engages in actions across the entire cancer control continuum, from cancer prevention to patient screening and diagnosis, from research to patient care and palliative support. ECL has a strong track record on advocacy and works together with its 34 national cancer leagues in working groups that are dedicated to different topics.

Wolfgang joined the ECL team as Executive Director in May 2025. He obtained his PhD in Biochemistry and Biology at the Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University in New York where he investigated molecular mechanisms of oncogenes, he began his career in industry and worked for the next 20 years as a scientist and group leader in early drug discovery programmes for pharmaceutical and biotech companies in Germany, the UK and Italy. He returned to academia in 2015, supporting a translational discovery group at the VIB institute in Leuven, Belgium. In 2018, he became Director General of EU-OPENSCREEN ERIC in Berlin, the first European research infrastructure for chemical biology and drug discovery. During that time, Wolfgang was also coordinator and work package leader for several EU-funded projects and Chair of the European Life Science Research Infrastructure Strategy Board. He joined the European Science Foundation in Strasbourg as Head of Science Operations in 2023, managing translational and clinical trial projects for the FightKidsCancer initiative in paediatric oncology. Wolfgang started his own consultancy company in 2024 and still works as an external Life Science expert in a project for the European Investment Bank (EIB, InvestEU).