Dr Marcus Heisler completed his PhD focused on plant development in 2000 at Monash University, Australia. He then moved to Caltech in the US as a Postdoctoral researcher from 2001-2009. Marcus was then recruited to EMBL Heidelberg as their first Australian group leader and first group leader to focus solely on plants. After gaining further support as a European Research Council (ERC) Investigator, Marcus returned to Australia as an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney in 2017. In 2024, Marcus and three European collaborators were awarded a prestigious ERC Synergy Grant worth over $17M, entitled "Reengineering Symmetry Breaking in Development and Evolution".