Tommy was born in Linz, Upper Austria in 1983. In 2002, he moved to Vienna to study chemistry at the University of Vienna. In 2007, he joined the laboratories of Prof. Johann Mulzer and under his guidance he developed enantioselective syntheses of the complex polyketide kendomycin and echinopines A and B [Interesting tidbit: he and another graduate student worked on the echinopines without telling Prof. Mulzer; they finished the synthesis, wrote it up, and presented it to their boss.]. After graduating in 2009, he moved to Harvard University, USA, to begin postdoctoral studies with Prof. Andrew G. Myers [here he did exceptional work on the trioxacarcin family of natural products.]. In 2012, he started his independent research as a Liebig-junior research group leader at the LMU Munich. His group has been supported by the Emmy Noether Program of the German Research Foundation (2013–2018) and by a Starting Grant of the European Research Council (2017–2021). In 2017, Tommy was awarded the Goering Visiting Professorship at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and accepted a position as Full Professor of Synthesis and Synthetic Methods at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.