Manuel Spannagl studied bioinformatics in Munich/Germany and specialized in plant genomics while working with the Plant Genome and Systems Biology (PGSB) group of Klaus Mayer at the Helmholtz Center in Munich. Manuel contributed and coordinated genomics analyses to multiple plant genome/genomics projects over the last 15 years, including tomato, sorghum, maize, barley, rye, oat and wheat. As a member of the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC) and 10+ wheat genomes consortium Manuel’s work on wheat included gene and repeat detection and annotation, transcriptome and network analyses as well as comparative studies between wheat subgenomes and across wheat relatives and cultivars. Manuel is a group leader within the PGSB unit and current work focuses on pan-genome and pan-transcriptome studies in wheat, barley and oats.