Anna Tompa graduated in medicine in Budapest Semmelweis Medical University in 1970 and became an assistant professor at the Institute of Pathology and Cancer Research of the School of Medicine. 

After specializing in pathology she went to the United States to study the advanced methodology of experimental cancer research. She began studying in vivo and in vitro experimental chemical carcinogenesis with collaboration of Eppley Institute of Research in Cancer ( Omaha, Ne.). As a member of an internationally recognized research group, she was among the first scientists who developed a tissue culture method to study organ and species specificity on highly differentiated liver, pancreatic and lung cells. This was the subject of her Ph.D thesis defended in Hungary after two years fellowship in the USA. Following this period, she focused on ways of preventing tumors triggered by exposure to occupational carcinogens. She has been conducting research and teaching since 1979 at the National Institute of Oc-cupational Health and its partial successor, the National Institute of Chemical Safety. She was the director of the Institute between 1998 and 2005. She has continued her research activities focused on the cancer prevention and obtained her D.Sc. in 1999 from Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She has written more than 100 publications and given about 200 scientific lectures in different domestic and international congresses. She has written two textbooks, co-authored four other textbooks and four popular science books. She is a member of numerous domestic and international scientific societies, and OECD expert in chemical safety and fellow of the Collegium Ramazzini. Presently she is a full professor and director of the Public Health Institute in Semmelweis University (Budapest, Hungary).