Matthias Hess is a Microbiologist with intensive training in the field of applied microbiology, biocatalysis, biotechnology, genomics, and molecular biology and he has international work experience. He received his doctoral degree in 2007 from the Hamburg University of Technology (HUT) in Hamburg, Germany. He attended the University of Konstanz (UK), Konstanz, Germany for his undergraduate training from 1997 until 1999. During his graduate program at UK and at the Northern Arizona University (NAU), Flagstaff, USA, he specialized in microbiology, microbial genetics, microbial ecology and limnology and gained valuable work experience in the laboratory of Dr. W. Boos (UK), Dr. B. Hungate (NAU), Dr. J. Marks (NAU), and Dr. A. Meyer (UK).

For his graduate thesis, he worked as research assistant in the laboratory of Dr. M. Daly at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences. He examined the mechanisms underlying the extremely radiation and desiccation resistant phenotype of the bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans and co-authored an article published in Science (Daly et al, 2004).

In 2004, Matthias joined the Institute of Technical Microbiology headed by Dr. G. Antranikian at the Hamburg University of Technology (HUT), Hamburg. Germany as Research Assistant. During his Ph.D. program at the Department of Technical Microbiology at HUT he focused his research on the extremely thermoacidophilic archaeon Picrophilus torridus, its enzymes and their potential application in industrial processes. As biocatalysts from extreme environments are of particular interest for numerous industrial applications he was also interested in enzymes from other extremophiles (e.g. Thermoplasma acidophilum).

After Matthias received his doctoral degree he joined the group of Dr. L. A. Pennacchio who is leading the Department of Genetic Analysis at the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI) headed by Dr. E. M. Rubin. The JGI unites the expertise of five national laboratories (Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Pacific Northwest) along with the Stanford Human Genome Center to advance genomics in support of the DOE mission related to clean energy generation and environmental characterization and clean-up. Matthias is conducting cutting-edge research at the JGI Production Genomics Facility that provides integrated high-throughput sequencing and computational analysis to enable systems-based scientific approaches to these challenges.