Matthias (born in 1984) studied chemistry at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Montpellier (ENSCM) and the University of Heidelberg, where he graduated in 2008. After completing his master thesis under the supervision of Prof. Christian Klein, he joined BASF SE in Ludwigshafen for a four-month industrial internship, followed by three months of voluntary social work in Tororo, Uganda. Thereafter, he moved to the University of Tübingen to work in the group of Prof. Stefan Laufer where he primarily focused on protein kinase inhibitors targeting the Janus kinase (JAK) family. In 2014, Matthias obtained his Ph. D. in pharmaceutical/medicinal chemistry with honors (summa cum laude). He joined the lab of Prof. Karl-Heinz Altmann at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich to pursue postdoctoral research on the total synthesis and biological properties of mycolactones and the cell type-specific targeting of antibiotics via­ conjugation to proteins. He returned to Tübingen in 2017 as a fellow of the Recruitment of Excellent Young Researchers program and has recently accepted a position as assistant professor (Juniorprofessor, W1) at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Tübingen.

My major research areas include the fields of medicinal chemistry & chemical biology, but also the total synthesis of natural products as well as drug targeting approaches. I am particularly focusing on the design of covalent protein kinase inhibitors and the development of novel electrophilic warheads for covalent targeting. Special emphasis is placed on the development of highly selective chemical probes for mapping the untargeted kinome. My group is further involved in several collaborative reserach projects e.g. on inhibitors for HECT E3 ubiquitin ligases and other targets.