Ferenc Nagy is a professor of biology at the Institute of Plant Biology, Biological Research Centre (BRC) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He studied biochemistry and genetics at the József Attila University in Szeged, Hungary, and after receiving his PhD in 1981, worked as a research scientist at the BRC. From 1983 to 1986 he continued his postdoctoral work as a fellow at the Laboratory of Plant Molecular Biology of the Rockefeller University, New York, USA, where he subsequently worked as an assistant professor for one year until 1987. Afterwards, Nagy continued his work at the BRC, as well as at the Friedrich-Miescher Institute at Basel, Switzerland, as a group leader. In 1997 he received his Doctor of Sciences from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest. In 1998 he became deputy director of the BCR and in 2000 general director of the Agricultural Biotechnology Center, GödöllÅ‘, Hungary. One year later, Nagy completed his habilitation at the Eötvös Loránd University of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary and becamea member of the scientific board of the Max Planck International Research School, Cologne, Germany. In 2004 Nagy became an honorary professor of the Albert-Ludwigs University, Freiburg, and in 2006 once again he renewed an appointment as deputy director of the BCR. He is currently a guest professor at the University of Edinburgh. In 2008 he began work as a senior fellow at the School of Life Sciences – LIFENET of the newly founded institute, FRIAS, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies. Nagy has been and continues to be a board member of numerous national and international foundations, programmes and committees such as, the Hungarian UNESCO Committee for Art and Science, the International Society for Plant Molecular Biology (ISPBM). He is an elected member of EMBO, the German Academy of Sciences and an elected Council Member of EMBO, as well as a member of the Plant Biology Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Ferenc Nagy has been distinguished by several awards, both nationally and internationally. In 1997 he was awarded the Humboldt Research Award. He held the Wolfgang Paul Research Award in 2001 and the Academy Award of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2004, followed in 2005 by the Bela Tanko Award of the Hungarian Society of Biochemists. In 2008 he received the Szechenyi Award of the Republic of Hungary.

The molecular mechanism by which these photoreceptors mediate light-dependent entrainment of the circadian clock  The components mediating, in a light-quality-dependent fashion, nucleocytoplasmic partitioning of phytochromes and UVR8 How phosphorylation and sumoylation of these photorecepors and other signalling components modulate red/far-red and UVB-induced signalling To what extent intercellular and cell-autonomous events contribute to phytochrome and UVR8 regulated photomorphogenesis.