Prof. Dr. Holger Puchta

Prof. Dr. Holger Puchta
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

Holger Puchta is director of the Botanical Institute and holds since 2002 the Chair of Plant Molecular Biology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany. He studied biochemistry at the universities of Tübingen and Munich. After being a research fellow at the Friedrich-Miescher-Institute in Basel he was a group leader at the IPK in Gatersleben. He was worldwide the first scientist to demonstrate that molecular scissors can be applied to induce different kinds of controlled change in plant genomes and one of the leading scientists adopting the CRISPR/Cas technology to plants. Recently his group was able to achieve another important breakthrough for breeding: CRISPR/Cas mediated plant chromosome engineering. For his work on plant genome engineering, he was named “Pioneer of Plant Biotechnology” by the Plant Biotechnology Journal. He is a highly cited researcher and was awarded twice with the prestigious advanced grant of the European Research Council.