Christian Fankhauser is a Professor at the Center for Integrative Genomics, University of Lausanne. He earned his PhD in 1994 at the University of Lausanne (ISREC), followed by postdoctoral work at UCSD and The Salk Institute. After serving as a Swiss NSF Assistant Professor in Geneva, he joined Lausanne in 2005 and became full Professor in 2011. He was elected to the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (2019) and EMBO (2025).

His research explores how plants integrate genetic and environmental cues, particularly light, to regulate their growth and development. Using Arabidopsis thaliana as a model, his group investigates how photoreceptors such as cryptochromes, phototropins, and phytochromes coordinate plant responses to light.