He received his undergraduate degree at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg in 2000 and his Ph.D. from Philipps-Universität Marburg in 2003. After working as a postdoc at the Hahn-Meitner-Institut Berlin (now Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin) from 2003 to 2005, he became an Assistant Professor at the University of Utah in 2006.