Detlef Weigel, a German-American scientist, is currently a director at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Royal Society, and recipient of several scientific awards.

The first major finding from his lab was that an Arabidopsis thaliana gene could dramatically accelerate flowering of trees; this established a proof of concept for Arabidopsis genetics as a platform for biotechnological discoveries. His group later discovered the first plant microRNA mutant and the factor that turned out to be the long sought-after mobile flower-inducing signal. In the past decade, his work has come to incorporate aspects at the interface of evolution and ecology, including an international effort to sequence the genomes of many natural A. thaliana strains (The 1001 Genomes Project).

Detlef has an extensive record of service to the scientific community, having served on a series of editorial and advisory boards. He is a forceful advocate of open access publishing and founding Deputy Editor of eLife. He is a co-founder of three biotech startups.