Dr. Robert Koller

I’ve studied biology at Technical University of Darmstadt (Germany) and Université de Bordeaux I (France) from 1997 to 2007.

My doctoral thesis was carried out within the Marie Curie Research Training Network ‘Biotic interactions in the rhizosphere as structuring forces for plant communities’ (Biorhiz, FP6 ) and I received my honors as PhD at Technical University of Darmstadt and Université de Lorraine under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Stefan Scheu and Dr. Christophe Robin in 2009. The PhD thesis has the title “Amoebae in the rhizosphere and their interactions with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi: effects on assimilate partitioning and nitrogen availability for plants”.

From 2008 to 2014 I worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Zoology at University of Cologne (Prof. Dr. Michael Bonkowski).

In 2014, I joint IBG-2: Plant Sciences of Forschungszentrum Jülich and became head of research of the ‘Enabling Technologies” group in 2017.

My expertise is in the field of soil ecology, plant biotic and abiotic interactions and plant phenotyping – including technology development. More recently I’ve extended my expertise to sustainable bioeconomy and seed sciences.

I am a member of the Ecology Society of Germany and German Soil Society, an active member in the Excellence Clusters PhenoRob (Agrorobotic; Digital Agriculture) and Co-Chair of the Advanced Sensor Application (ASA) working group in the International Plant Phenotyping Network (IPPN).

Research interests:

• Development of technologies for seed and plant phenotyping

• Plant carbon allocation and nutrient uptake

• Plant biotic and abiotic interactions