Ana María Cuervo, born 1966 in Barcelona, is a medical doctor and cell biologist. She is an expert in the cellular process of autophagy, the self-purification of cells. In her laboratory, she is investigating, among other things, the connection between autophagy and ageing. She is Professor of Developmental and Molecular Biology and Anatomy and Co-Director of the Institute for Ageing Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.