He received his PhD in Physics from the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, in 2005 on the theory and simulation of charged polymers. He carried out his postdoctoral work at the University of California, Santa Barbara (2006-2009) and, as a Royal Society Newton Fellow (2009-2011), at the University of Sheffield and at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics of the University of Cambridge, UK. His research interests include physics of Coulomb fluids and strongly charged macromolecules (such as colloids, polymers and membranes), nano-particle/DNA complexes, electrostatic stability of virus-like nano-capsids, Casimir effect, electrostatics of soft disordered media and, more recently, fluctuating hydrodynamics of strongly confined fluids, and active self-propulsion in fluid media.