Björn Usadel studied Biochemistry at the Free University Berlin and conducted his MSc research on Drosophila at the Rockefeller University.  Upon returning to Germany in 2001, he conducted his PhD studies in the lab of Dr. Markus Pauly at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, Potsdam on identifying and characterizing novel cell wall genes using bioinformatics approaches.

After a postdoc and group leader position with Prof Mark Stitt at the same institute, he became full professor and director at RWTH Aachen University and the Research Center Jülich in 2011. He has co-authored more than 120 publications and is an ISI highly cited researcher in Plant and Animal Sciences.