I graduated from the University of Tübingen at the Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics in theoretical and experimental Astrophysics. My scientific research focuses on the development of detectors and instrumentation for space and terrestrial applications. During the last 25 years I worked in the fields of X-ray astronomy, the race for dark matter and currently I am working on detectors for photon science.

Further stations of my career were the Max-Planck Institute for extraterrestrial Physics, the University of Technology in Darmstadt and the European Organisation for Nuclear Research - CERN. At the European XFEL I was responsible for the detector program of the first-generation detector systems up to routine operation.