Philipp Keller studied physics at the University of Karlsruhe and at the University of Heidelberg on a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation, graduating with a Dipl. Phys. (Master of Science in Physics) in 2005. He received the Award of Excellence of the University of Heidelberg as well as the Otto-Haxel-Prize for his diploma work at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) on the "Analysis of microtubule dynamic instability with light sheet-based microscopy".
In 2005 he became a PhD student in biology at EMBL on a fellowship from the EMBL International PhD Programme. During his PhD he was working on three main projects: digital scanned laser light sheet fluorescence microscopy" (with Dr. Ernst Stelzer), In toto reconstruction of zebrafish embryogenesis (with Dr. Jochen Wittbrodt), and the computational analysis of the evolution of the yeast genome architecture (with Dr. Michael Knop). His research on the reconstruction of zebrafish development was selected for the "Top Five Scientific Breakthroughs of 2008" by The Times (Dec 19, 2008) and for the "Top Ten Scientific Breakthroughs of 2008" by Science (322:1768-73).
After a short postdoc at EMBL in the groups of Dr. Ernst Stelzer and Dr. Michael Knop, he started his lab in 2010 as a Fellow at HHMI’s Janelia Farm Research Campus. The goal of his research is to uncover the principles underlying the development of the central nervous system. His lab uses advanced light-sheet microscopy and computational methods to quantitatively study neural development in Drosophila and zebrafish.