Hi there! I am a biologist with broad interests specialising on plant evolution.
Born in the north-west of Germany (Westphalia), I went to Franconia (Bavaria) to study biology in Würzburg, because they had the topics that fascinated me a lot at the time: tropical biology (around KE Linsenmair), social insects / ants (around B Hölldobler), and they were the only place in the world studying Triphyophyllum, a rare carnivorous plant (organic chemists around G Bringmann). After a few years, I could indeed explore some of these topics in greater detail! The chance to work on the ecology and biomechanics of one of my favourite plants, Nepenthes, arose, and so I went to do field work in Borneo, Brunei Darussalam, with a group of insect adhesion researchers from Cambridge, UK. As the chance arose, I spent an ERASMUS year during my master thesis (Diplomarbeit) at Cambridge, with another field season in Brunei Darussalam.
I then decided to do a PhD in Zürich, because the unlikely chance arose to study population genomics in Nepenthes and resolve the mystery of genetically stable species co-existence in the face of hybridisation and introgression. Thus I got hooked on evolutionary biology, ecological genomics, sex chromosomes, and bioinformatics. I discovered that even invisible sex chromosomes can be really easy to detect in a certain type of sequence data. Diving deeper into the fascinating realm of sexuality and mating systems in plants, I continued to Lausanne for a first PostDoc with Leucadendron, a plant genus with very strong sexual dimorphism.
I became a father and in 2021, I returned to Germany for another PostDoc at Potsdam. Here I study the molecular-genetic basis, development and evolution of heterostyly in Amsinckia - the curious case of different kinds of flowers in the same population! In fact, the heterostyly mating system involves supergenes, which are similar to sex chromosomes in may ways.
Curriculum Vitae
Dr. Mathias Scharmann
born 1986 in Germany
Academic record
| 2018 | Doktor der Wissenschaften (Dr. sc. ETH Zürich), Institute of Integrative Biology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland, Supervisor: Prof. Alex Widmer, “Evolutionary genomics of carnivorous Nepenthes pitcher plants” |
| 2012 | Diplom-Biologe Univ., University of Würzburg, Germany, sehr gut |
scientific career & education
| 2021-current | Post-Doc (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter), Prof. Michael Lenhard, Institute for Biochemistry and Biology, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany |
| 2018-2021 | Post-Doc (Premier Assistant), Prof. John Pannell, Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland |
| 2012-2018 | doctoral student, Prof. Alex Widmer, Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zürich, Switzerland |
| 2011 | Visitor at University of Cambridge, UK, Insect Biomechanics Workgroup |
| 2006-2012 | biology student with focus on Tropical Biology, Plant Physiology and Plant Ecophysiology, Unviersity of Würzburg, Germany |
awards
| 2011 | DAAD scholarship |
| 2009 | DAAD scholarship |
research interests and expertise
- evolutionary + ecological genomics
- plant mating systems
- sex chromosomes and supergenes
- plant diversification, speciation and evolutionary radiations
- carnivorous plants
- evolution of developmental systems