Emeran Mayer was born in a small town in Bavaria where his family ran a Confectionary business since 1873. After an agonizing decision against taking over the family business, he finished Medical School at the Ludwig Maximilian’s University in Munich, completed his residency training at the Vancouver General Hospital in Vancouver, Canada before moving to Los Angeles.

There he worked under the late John H. Walsh to study the role of gut brain interactions and with James Meyer on the role of stomach emptying at the prestigious Center for Ulcer Research and Education and completed his specialty training in Gastroenterology at UCLA.