Silvia Balaban studied law from 2005-2010 at the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg. She completed her legal clerkship at the Higher Regional Court of Karlsruhe from 2010-2012. She then worked at the Center for Applied Law at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology from 2012-2016. She has been at the FZI Research Center for Information Technology since April 2016. She initially worked as deputy head of department in the Software Engineering division. From 2017, she was head of the legal department and since then has also worked as a legal advisor for the FZI. Since July 2023, she has been jointly responsible for Research Administration together with David Karlin.