Arne Thomas studied chemistry in Gießen, Marburg and Edinburgh. He earned his doctorate with Markus Antonietti at the MPI of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam/Golm in 2003.  Subsequently he worked with a Feodor Lynen fellowship at the University of California, Santa Barbara / USA in the laboratory of Galen D. Stucky. In 2005 he returned to the MPI of Colloids and Interfaces, where he worked as a research group leader. In 2009 he accepted the position as full professor of inorganic chemistry (Functional Materials) at the Technische Universität Berlin. Since 2019 he is the spokesperson of the Cluster of Excellence "UniSysCat - Unifying Systems in Catalysis". The main interest of the Thomas group is the synthesis and application of nanostructured materials, with a special focus on the generation of porous functional materials for catalytic applications.