His Work
Manuel is fascinated by the possibilities the field of genomics can offer when looking to develop solutions for societal challenges. By using new technologies for sequencing and genome assembly, Manuel’s work explores the natural genetic diversity of wheat and cereal varieties grown across the globe. In particular, his research involves describing the genes and mechanisms related to wheat insensitivities and resistances, as well as creating and introducing the genomic resources for adapting our main crops to the challenges associated with climate change.
About Manuel
Manuel studied bioinformatics before joining the Plant Genome and Systems Biology (PGSB) group at the Helmholtz Zentrum München in 2003. Here he contributed to several key plant genome studies of economically important species including the tomato, barley and bread wheat genome. As a member and team leader in the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC) he coordinated and directed the efforts to generate a high-quality gene annotation for the newly generated bread wheat reference genome sequence. He is now senior scientist and deputy group leader in the PGSB. In his spare time, he loves riding and racing his bike, and travelling.