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.Tom started his scientific career in the field of plant-pathogen interactions. During his PhD in the lab of Ulla Bonas (2010-2015, MLU Halle) he worked on transcription activator-like effectors (TALEs). During this time Tom worked with transcriptional regulation and mechanistic insights of nucleic acid binding proteins. After PhD he moved to the field of synthetic biology in the lab of Alain Tissier (2015-now, IPB Halle).