Professor Alain Tissier Alain has been head of the Department of Cell and Metabolic Biology at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry since October 2010. His research focuses on understanding the metabolic network of specialized plant metabolic cell factories, such as glandular trichomes or laticifers. He is also interested in metabolic engineering and synthetic regulatory circuits in plants and has developed molecular tools to support these research efforts. His long-term goal is to understand the connectivity between primary and specialized metabolisms and the coordination of development and metabolic processes in plants.

Dr Tom Schreiber Tom is currently working as a Post Doc in the lab of Alain Tissier (2015-now). His main interests are regulatory tools for programmable nucleic acid targeting (TALEs, amiRNAs, CRISPR systems) and their application in synthetic circuits, metabolic engineering as well as genome editing in plants.

Jayanth Bharadwaj Jay is a graduate student with Alain Tissier. He has a Bachelors of Engineering Degree in Biotechnology from Sri Jayachamarajendra College of Engineering (SJCE), India and a Masters Degree in Biotechnology from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. His research focuses on developing molecular systems and tools for cell-specific expression, regulation and efficient transfer of C₄ photosynthetic genes in Rice plants.