Joachim Wittbrodt studied biology and chemistry, and recieved his Ph.D. in
1990 from the University of Munich for the cloning of the melanoma oncogene in Xhiphophorus. He continued working on fish (medaka and zebrafish in particluar) during his postdoc with Frederic Rosa at the
Biocentre in Basle where he focused on mesoderm induction and axis
formation in vertebrates. He started his independent research in 1995 on
medaka eye development at the Max-Planck Institute for Biophysical
Chemistry in Goettingen. Since 1999, he has been a group leader at the EMBL,
Heidelberg, where his studies are focused on the development and evolution
of the eye and on the generation of new technologies using medaka as the
main model system.