Professor Thomas C. Mettenleiter studied biology and earned his doctorate on molecular genetics at the Eberhard-Karls-University in Tübingen. For his postdoctoral studies he received a fellowship from the German Research Foundation to work at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA. His main field of research are virus infections of animals and zoonotic viral infections. His scientific record contains more than 500 peer-reviewed publications and he supervised more than 100 young scientists

From 1994 to 2019 he headed the Institute of Molecular Virology and Cell Biology at the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut (FLI), Federal Research Institute for Animal Health on the Isle of Riems. From 1996 to 2023 he was President of the FLI. Thomas C. Mettenleiter has been a two-term member of the Scientific Commission of the OIE (now World Organization for Animal Health, WOAH) and participated in several international committees and working groups. From May 2021-Dec 2023 he served as founding co-chair of the One Health High-Level Expert Panel in its first term. He is member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Academy of Sciences in Hamburg, the Polish Academy of Science and the Royal Belgian Academy of Medicine.

He was awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover and the Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, an extraordinary professorship from the University of Greifswald and a honorary professorship from the University of Rostock. Furthermore, he is recipient of the Robert von Ostertag Medal of the German Federal Chamber of Veterinarians, the Professor-Niklas Medal of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the Cross of Merit 1st class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Loeffler-Frosch-Medal of the German Society for Virology.

In 2024, Professor Mettenleiter served as scientific editor for the special Centenary issue of the Scientific and Technical Review of the WOAH.