Recognizing Plant Physiology first authors: Thiago Alexandre Moraes

Thiago Alexandre Moraes, first author of Response of the circadian clock and diel starch turnover to one day of low light or low CO2

Name: Thiago Alexandre Moraes

Current Position: Postdoctoral Researcher, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, Potsdam-Golm, Germany

Education: PhD in Molecular Plant Physiology studying the role of the circadian clock in the regulation of starch turnover in Arabidopsis, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology (MPIMP), Potsdam-Golm, Germany. M.S. in Technology and Innovation in Information Engineering, State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), São Paulo, Brazil

Non-scientific Interests: computers, programming, games, aircrafts, artificial intelligence, politics

Brief bio: My name is Thiago Alexandre Moraes, and I’m a 32 years old guy from Brazil absolutely curious about plants and their behaviour. In 2006 I began my undergraduate studies at the Laboratory of Applied Photonics (UNICAMP), with Prof. Dr. Cristiano de Mello Gallep, seeking to apply biophysics and statistical methods to study ultra-weak photonic emissions from wheat plants. From 2010 to 2012 I pursued my Master’s degree in the same lab with emphasis on the rhythms and patterns of the photonic emissions in wheat seedlings. In 2013 I had the amazing opportunity to join Prof. Dr. Mark Stitt’s research group in Germany. Coming to the MPIMP was at the same time challenging – I had almost ZERO experience in molecular biology – and also a great chance for me to implement all the skills and tricks in computational and statistical analysis I had learnt in Brazil. Together with colleagues we managed to greatly improve our capacity to track down sources of analytic and experimental error, working to minimize them. This was very important for the conclusion of my PhD in 2018 and allowed us to reliably pick up small but important transcriptional and metabolic responses described in this paper.