Jörg Holetschek was born in 1976 in Saalfeld, Germany. At Ilmenau Technical University he studied Information Systems Engineering (Wirtschaftsinformatik) and graduated in 2002. As his thesis, in co-operation with a research team at the university, he developed a medical database for neurological disorders.

During his studies, he worked for several companies, setting up computer networks, developing database applications and enterprise software, and doing project management tasks. From 2003 to 2004, he worked at a private company developing enterprise resource planning software; one of his main fields was the optimization of the SQL Server database backend.

Since 2004, he has been working as a research assistant at the Botanical Museum and Botanic Garden Berlin-Dahlem, Dept. of Biodiversity. His main scientific activities are in the field of biological collection databasing; the design and implementation of networks for primary biodiversity data, including the development of standards, protocols and software implementations; the publishing of primary biodiversity databases; database design and optimization of large-scale databases and the setup of servers, portals and databases for the different networks. In his present position, he is the museum’s coordinator for biodiversity data networks and the CETAF node manager for Germany.
In addition, he’s been working on projects for the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and the Australian Virtual Herbarium.