Univ.-Prof. Dr. Thomas Böttcher
Professur für Microbial Biochemistry an der Fakultät für Chemie und am Zentrum für Mikrobiologie und Umweltsystemwissenschaft
Curriculum Vitae:
born 1982 in Munich, Germany
2003-2006 Studies of Chemistry and Biochemistry, LMU Munich, Germany
2004-2007 Fellow of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation
2006-2009 Doctoral Thesis (funded by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation), Laboratory of Stephan Sieber, CIPSM & Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, LMU Munich, Germany
2010 Award of the Munich University Society
2010 Klaus Tschira Award for achievements in public understanding of science
2010 Postdoctoral Research, Laboratory of Stephan Sieber, TU Munich, Germany
2010 Co-founder of AVIRU GmbH, Munich, Germany
2010-2011 Project Leader of the EXIST transfer of research project AVIRU, anti-virulence drug development, funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi)
2011-2014 Science manager and associate of AVIRU GmbH
2011-2014 Postdoctoral Research (funded by a Leopoldina Research Fellowship), Laboratory of Jon Clardy, Department of Biological Chemistry & Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
2014 Emmy Noether Grant of DFG
2014-2020 Research Group Leader at the Department of Chemistry and Research Fellow at the Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz, Germany
2015-2020 Elected member of "Die Junge Akademie" at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
2019 Manfred-Fuchs-Prize of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
2020 ERC Consolidator Grant
since October 2020 Professor of Microbial Biochemistry, Department of Microbiology and Ecosystem Science and Department of Biological Chemistry, University of Vienna
Research Areas:
The research of Thomas Böttcher focuses on the chemistry of microbial interactions and chemical strategies for modulating microbial growth, virulence, and coordinated behaviours such as swarming motility or biofilm formation. He and his research group are interested in elucidating the chemical structure of metabolites that mediate and control microbe-microbe, microbe-host and microbe-phage interactions and exploit these compounds by synthetic chemistry as species-specific antibiotics and anti-infectives. Furthermore, they develop chemical probes to understand virulence-related functions of human pathogens and develop customized inhibitors of pathogenesis traits. Their goal is to improve the understanding of chemical interactions of microbes and to create chemical tools for precision interventions in complex microbiomes with the ultimate vision of chemical microbiome engineering.
Publications
"Unsere Forschung soll das Grundlagenverständnis der chemischen Interaktionen im Mikrobiom des Menschen erweitern und damit Möglichkeiten zur gezielten Kontrolle mikrobieller Krankheitserreger schaffen." (Thomas Böttcher)