Stephan Schuster's Biography

Stephan Schuster, Professor, The Pennsylvania State University

After receiving a degree in organic chemistry, Stephan C. Schuster moved into Biochemistry and Microbiology during his graduate studies at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany. During his postdoctoral studies at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA, he continued his work on bacterial motility and signal transduction. Holding group leader positions at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany (1994-2000) and the Max-Planck-Institute for Developmental Biology in Tuebingen, Germany (2000-2004), he subsequently moved into the field of genomics working on vertebrate and microbial projects.

In 2005 Stephan C. Schuster was appointed a Professorship for Molecular Microbial Ecology at Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), USA. He currently is a Full Professor working at the Center for Comparative Genomics and Bioinformatics(PSU) when he conducts a wide range of genome sequencing projects ranging from microbial to human genomes. Being a pioneer in next-generation sequencing, Prof. Schuster has worked on the forefront of technology development and its implementation for research in close collaboration with industry partners. Works of note include the mammoth genome project, as well as two of the first 10 published human genomes. His work on Evolutionary Biology and ancient DNA also has aided novel approaches that are now commonly used for the analysis of mixtures of genomes, called metagenomes.

As a founding member of the Research Center of Excellence, SCELSE (Singapore Centre on Environmental Life Sciences Engineering), at Nanyang Technical University (NTU), Singapore, Prof. Schuster has served as a cluster head since 2011. His current interests include metagenomics and metatranscriptomics of environmental, but also medical related samples that will help to characterize the environment at the molecular level.