Oliver Dautermann was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focused on improving photosynthetic efficiency by relaxing photoprotection. For the RIPE project, he helped optimize the xanthophyll cycle by introducing natural occurring variations into Arabidopsis, a model plant used for research. Oliver earned his bachelor's degree in biochemical in vitro characterization of xanthophyll de-epoxidases and earned his master's degree in establishing an in planta approach for zeaxanthin epoxidase characterization. He went on to receive his doctorate in biosynthesis from Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz. His work is published in The Plant Journal. He now works for BASF in Germany.