Staffan Persson completed his PhD in Dec, 2003. The degree was a joint PhD degree between Lund University (Sweden) and North Carolina State University (US). He then pursued a postdoc at the Carnegie Institution of Washington at Stanford University 2004-2007 with prof Chris Somerville. Staffan was appointed as a Max-Planck Group Leader at the MPI for Molecular Plant Physiology (MPI-MP) in Potsdam in 2008, where he stayed until 2014. Since Jan 2015 Staffan is a R@MAP professor at the School of BioSciences at University of Melbourne. The research in his group aims at understanding how plants are producing cellulose, which is the most abundant biopolymer on Earth and a raw material for many industries, including paper, textiles and fuel.