Dr. Sebastian Schornack

Biography

Sebastian Schornack is a Senior Group Leader at the Sainsbury Laboratory, University of Cambridge. He completed his Diploma project at Martin-Luther University of Halle, Germany, focusing on cloning the tomato disease resistance gene Bs4, and obtained his PhD in Plant Biology in 2006, where he explored the structure and specificity regulation of the Bs4 gene, earning the Martin Luther Award for Excellence. Following his doctoral work, he conducted a postdoctoral study at the same university, leading to the co-discovery of the TAL effector DNA binding code. He was awarded a postdoctoral scholarship from the German Science Foundation to investigate effector proteins of Phytophthora infestans at the Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, UK. In 2013, he received the Gatsby Fellowship and the Royal Society University Research Fellowship, which allowed him to launch his independent research on intracellular plant-microbe interactions. He became a Principal Gatsby Fellow at the Sainsbury Laboratory in 2019. His research aims to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of plant-microbe interactions, focusing on filamentous pathogens and symbiotic fungi, and adopting a comparative evolutionary approach across diverse plant systems, including bryophytes and angiosperms.

Research Interests

Experience