Ludger A. Wessjohann is a professor at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry. He studied chemistry in Hamburg (Germany), Southampton (UK), and Oslo (Norway, Prof. Skattebøl). He earned his doctorate in 1990 with Prof. de Meijere in Hamburg. After a short period as a lecturer in Brazil, he became a postdoctoral Feodor-Lynen fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt-foundation with Prof. Paul Wender at Stanford University (USA) working on the total synthesis of Taxol®. After an assistant professorship in Munich (LMU, 1992–1998), he was appointed to the Chair of Bioorganic Chemistry at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (NL), working on organometallic chemistry and biocatalysis. Since 2001, he has been the director of the dept. of bioorganic chemistry at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry (IPB) in Halle (Germany), and parallelly holds the chair of natural product chemistry at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. From 2010 to 2017, he served as the Managing Director of the IPB. He focuses on the discovery, synthesis and application of natural products and bioactive derivatives. He has over 400 publications and 30 patent applications, and is a co-founder of six companies. He is a member of many boards and commissions, including the “mision de sabios” of the Colombian government. He received numerous scholarships, prizes and honors, e.g., Microsoft IT Founders Award, and is a foreign member of the Brazilian Academy of Science.