Michael Richter studied biology at the University Bremen, focussing on genetics, biochemistry, and botany. There he learned the fundamental laboratory techniques of modern molecular biology for the analysis of microorganisms. During his time as research assistant at the Max Planck Institute in Bremen, he gained first experiences with the computational analysis of marine microbial genomes. At this time (2002), the analysis of a single genome was a major investment in terms of computational and man power. Nowadays, a single genome is rapidly computed using advanced software tools, but transferring this flood of data into biological knowledge is still a challenge. In his current field of marine ecological genomics the burning questions that need to be addressed are: How do marine organisms adapt to environmental changes and to what extent can we predict a phenotype from the genetic potential coded in the genomes. Modern microbial genomics is even moving one step further by sequencing complete microbial communities instead of single organisms. This approach is called metagenomics and targets the complex interactions of environmental communities by the investigation of their genetic potential.Specialties: java, sql, perl, html,php, linux, ubuntu, bioinformatics, computational biology, metagenomics, genomics