Oliver Thorn-Seshold

Oliver was born in Sydney, Australia in 1985. He studied chemistry at the University of Sydney and University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He took his PhD in chemical biology in 2013 on imaging probes for hydrolases, under Prof. Jens Hasserodt at the ENS Lyon, France. He postdoc'd in photopharmacology with Prof. Dirk Trauner at the LMU Munich.

He started his independent career in chemical biology at the LMU in 2016, and was supported from 2018 as a DFG Emmy Noether group leader.

In 2024 he started as W3 Professor of Organic Chemistry at the TU Dresden, focusing on the function-oriented design of organic chemical reagents to study cell biology and pharmacology. Heteroatoms (O, N, S, Se, ...), π-systems, and gating chemical responses, are usually central to the group's projects.