Marek received his Bachelor and Master degrees in biochemistry at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, where he studied the biosynthesis of polysaccharides in tip-growing cells in the group of prof. William G.T. Willats. He then joined the group of prof. Staffan Persson at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology (MPIMP), focusing on computational biology of plants. After a brief postdoc, he established a research group at MPIMP, where he used computational biology to study gene co-function networks, with the aim to understand how genes work together to express plant traits and to elucidate how plants evolve new pathways. His group at NTU was established in December 2017.