He performed his doctoral research on evolutionary fitness landscapes of RNA and proteins in the group of Peter Schuster, Institute of Theoretical Chemistry, University of Vienna, and received his Ph.D in 1995.
[3] He has been a guest professor at Claude Bernard University Lyon 1 and a visiting scholar at European Bioinformatics Institute.
This phenomenon, termed as the look ahead effect, dramatically increases the probability of a gene to acquire beneficial double mutations.
Recent projects form his group have coupled theoretical findings with experiments to understand the molecular evolution of promiscuous (multifunctional) enzymes,[34] and the properties of proteins that emerge de novo.
[2][36] Since 2021, Bornberg-Bauer is leading the research priority program, "The Genomic Basis of Evolutionary Innovations (GEvol)" of the German Research Foundation[37][38][39] He has been Editor-in-chief of Bioinformatics and Biology Insights[40] since 2009 and is editorial member of the Journal of the Royal Society Interface,[41] BMC Evolutionary Biology[42] and the Journal of Experimental Zoology.