Martin Lercher

Martin Lercher is a Professor at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany, with joint affiliations in the Institute for Computer Science and the Department of Biology. He earned a PhD in Mathematical Physics from Cambridge University and conducted postdoctoral work in evolutionary genomics as a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Bath, UK, and as a Heisenberg Fellow at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg. In Düsseldorf, he established an interdisciplinary research program that develops mechanistic, physics-based models of biological systems, with a particular emphasis on thermodynamics and metabolism. His work spans bacterial cells and whole plants and combines mathematical modeling, genomics, and deep learning to understand how biological systems function and evolve in different environments.

Lercher is also deeply engaged in scientific education, leading the development of a novel bachelor’s program in Quantitative Biology at his university. Together with Itai Yanai, he has co-authored the popular science book “The Society of Genes” and co-founded the Night Science Institute with the mission to transform the culture of science toward the appreciation and the explicit teaching of the creative part of the scientific process.