He began his undergraduate studies in physics at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn, Germany, and received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois in 2002. He then joined the Materials Science Department at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) as a Goldhaber Fellow. In 2006, he joined the Physics Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he pursues the development and utilization of aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy of nanoscale materials systems. One important aspect of his work is the education and training of graduate students in a variety of analytical techniques, including Z-contrast imaging and electron energy-loss spectroscopy, to study the effects of defects and interfaces in multifunctional oxide materials.