Graduated from the University of Erlangen Medical School in 1993. His career steps included positions in Erlangen, Germany, Boston, MA, USA and Giessen, Germany until, in October 2012, he was appointed Chairman of the Department of Cardiology and Professor of Medicine at the University of Erlangen, Germany.

The main clinical interests of Stephan Achenbach are Interventional Cardiology, General Cardiology  as well as Cardiac Imaging and Intensive Care Medicine. His research interests focus on cardiac intervention and cardiac imaging, mainly computed tomography, with an  emphasis on using CT to identify and quantify coronary stenoses, to analyze and characterize coronary atherosclerotic plaque and support coronary and structural interventional procedures.
Stephan Achenbach has authored approximately 550 publications listed in Medline. According to Thomson Reuters, he is among the 1% most cited researchers in the field of Clinical Medicine. He serves as the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography . He was the Founding President and is currently a member of the Executive Committee of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography. Stephan Achenbach served as a Vice President of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) for the 2014-2016 period. He is currently a Board Member and  Chairperson of the ESC Congress Programme Committee.

Dr. Achenbach has received several awards, including the Jan Brod Award for Clinical Research of the Medical School of Hannover, Germany (1999), the Thomas C. Cesario Distinguished Visiting Professorship Award, University of California Irvine School of Medicine (2007), the Simon Dack Award, American College of Cardiology (2009), the Gold Medal of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (2015),  the Sir Godfrey Hounsfield Award of the British Institute of Radiology (2016), and the Best Teaching Award, Clinical Medicine, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (2014, 2015, 2016).