Ralf J. Sommer did his undergraduate work in biology at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule in Aachen, Germany, before moving to pursue graduate studies in the University of Tübingen and Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, where he earned his Ph. D. in 1992. After a short term as a research assistent at the same university, he spent a two-year EMBO research fellowship at the California Institute of Technology (USA), working in Paul W. Sternberg's lab. He returned to Germany in 1995, as a young investigator at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, becoming Scientific Member and Director of the Department for Evolutionary Biology in 1999, and serving as Executive Director of the Institute from 2001 to 2003. He serves on the editorial boards of a number of journals and is a member of the Faculty of 1000. His research program focuses on evolutionary analysis of developmental processes and mechanisms, and has working to developed the nematode vulva as a case study in evolutionary developmental biology.