Lothar Kalmbach studied biology at the Universities of Mainz, Umeå and Würzburg. After his Diploma thesis with Markus Grebe (2010) he joined the lab of Niko Geldner in Lausanne for his PhD thesis (2010-2016) working on the cellular processes underlying Casparian Strip formation in the endodermis. He left Lausanne for a postdoc in Cambridge as a Marie-Curie, SNSF and EMBO Fellow in Yka Helariutta’s lab where he studied phloem development and cellular differentiation (2016-2022). He then accepted a junior group leader position in the department of Jürgen Kleine-Vehn in Freiburg (2023-2024). After being awarded a Starting Grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation, he started his lab as an Assistant Professor in Neuchâtel in 2024.