Associate ProfessorMarcus Heisler

Marcus Heisler is a developmental biologist interested in pattern formation in plants. After completing his undergraduate degree with honors at the University of Melbourne Marcus studied flower development for his PhD in the laboratory of Professor David Smyth at Monash. He then moved to California to start a postdoc at the California Insitute of Technology (Caltech) in Elliot Meyerowitz's lab where he studied how plant organs are positioned (phyllotaxis). At Caltech, Marcus initiated research on the plant hormone auxin and cell polarity and developed novel techniques to enable the imaging of live plant shoot apices. After an appointment as Senior Researach Associate at Caltech, Marcus joined the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg Germany as their first Australian group leader and first group leader to soley focus on plants. During this time he was awarded a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) starting grant worth 1.5M Euros over five years. Finally in 2017 he moved back to Australia to take up an Associate Professor position in SOLES, Sydney. In 2024 his lab together with labs in Germany, the UK and Sweden were awarded an ERC Synergy grant worth $17M over six years for a project entitled Re-engineering Symmetry Breaking in Development and Evolution (RESYDE).