Pavel Tomancak

Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Germany

• Position : Research Group Leader
• Website : Pavel Tomancak group

Pavel Tomancak studied Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. He then did his PhD at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in the field of Drosophila developmental genetics. During his post-doctoral time at the University of California in Berkeley at the laboratory of Gerald M. Rubin, he established image-based genome-scale resources for patterns of gene expression in Drosophila embryos. Since 2005 he leads an independent research group at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden where he became senior research group leader in 2013. Since 2021, Dr Tomancak serves as a Director of the Central European Institute of Technology (CEITEC) consortium in Brno Czech Republic. His laboratory in Dresden initially studied patterns of gene expression during development by combining molecular, imaging and image analysis techniques. The group has lead a significant technological development aiming towards more complete quantitative description of gene expression patterns using light sheet microscopy. The emphasis on open access resulted in establishment of major resources such as OpenSPIM and Fiji. The Tomancak lab is currently expanding the scope of the research to other invertebrate species and employs comparative approach to understand the evolution of morphogenesis.