Stephan Bodis began his medical studies in 1978 at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and completed them in 1984 at the University of Basel. He then worked in the Department of Internal Medicine at the Cantonal Hospital of Baden until 1987 and at the University Hospital of Zurich until 1989. From 1989 to 1991, he was a Fellow of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) and also a Research Fellow in the Department of Hematology/Oncology and Molecular Pharmacology at the Gustave Roussy Institute in Villejuif near Paris. This was followed by a clinical and research residency and fellowship in radiation oncology at the Joint Center for Radiotherapy at Harvard Medical School in Boston and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Biology, Cambridge, until 1995. From 1995 to 2003, Bodis was a senior physician and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Radiobiology at the University Hospital of Zurich. In March 1998, he was appointed Privatdozent at the University of Zurich, and in 2004, he was appointed Titularprofessor.