He received his Dipl.-Ing. Degree in Industrial Engineering and Management from the Technical University of Berlin (Berlin, Germany) in 2002 and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Arizona State University (Tempe, Arizona, USA) in 2005. He was a Faculty Research Associate and Associated Faculty with the Department of Electrical Engineering at Arizona State University from 2005 to 2007. From 2008 to 2011, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computing and New Media Technologies at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point (Stevens Point, Wisconsin, USA) and from 2011 to 2015 he was an Assistant Professor at CMU.