Paul Wilmes is a Professor of Systems Ecology at the University of Luxembourg. He is the head of the Systems Ecology group and holds affiliations to the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine and the Department of Life Sciences and Medicine, and is a fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies. In 2024, Paul was a Visiting Professor at Stanford University.

Paul’s research focuses on elucidating the function of complex microbial communities in situ. He pioneered functional omic analyses of microbial consortia and his group has developed new wet- and dry-lab methods for in situ microbiome studies. He presented his group’s research at more than 200 scientific events worldwide and has published more than 180 peer-reviewed publications. He serves as the elected President of the Luxembourg Society for Microbiology and is an elected executive board member of the “Institut Grand-ducal, Section des Sciences naturelles,physiques et mathématiques”.

Paul Wilmes has been awarded several prizes, including FNR Awards, the Grand Prix en Sciences de l’Institut Grand-Ducal, and the Science for Society Prize. He has received frontier research grants from the European Research Council (ERC), including a Consolidator Grant in 2020 (ExpoBiome) and a Proof of Concept grant (AMY-Dx).  Paul is the acting elected President of the Luxembourg Society for Microbiology, and an elected executive board member of the “Institut Grand-ducal, Section des Sciences naturelles, physiques et mathématiques”. He is a British Chevening, German Academic Research Service, FNR ATTRACT, and Fulbright alumnus

He is (co-)teaching the Microbiology module in the Bachelor in Medicine and the Biotechnology module in the Bachelor in Life Sciences,  as well as Bioscience Seminar Series in the Master in Molecular and Computational Biomedicine.

Paul Wilmes has given extensive interviews with international media (e.g. National Geographic, Scientific American, Nature Medicine, The Times, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Bild der Wissenschaft, Radio-Canada, Swiss Public Radio SRF2, etc.) as well as national media (e.g. RTL Radio, RTL Télé, 100,7, Luxemburger Wort, Paperjam, Journal, Lëtzebuerger Land, Le Jeudi, etc.). These media outlets published content based on the research from my laboratory. He and his group have participated in several public exhibits, in particular the Luxembourg’s Researchers’ Days.

Between 2006 and 2009, Paul was a Postdoctoral research scholar in Jill Banfield’s group at the University of California, Berkeley (USA). From 2010 to 2011, he was a research fellow at the Centre de Recherche Public – Gabriel Lippmann (Luxembourg), and joined the University of Luxembourg in 2011.