He received his Ph.D. from Freiburg University, Germany, in 2003, which was followed by postdoctoral positions at the Laboratoire de Physique des Solides in Orsay, France, Leiden University, Netherlands, and Basel University, Switzerland. He joined the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Würzburg University as an associate professor in 2007. His research interests are focused on different aspects of theoretical condensed-matter physics, like transport phenomena in low-dimensional systems, solid-state quantum information processing, and nanomechanics.