OK, some words about myself. I was born in Karlsruhe, Germany and grew up in Kraichtal, a small town in South-WesternGermany located on the triangle spanned by the three cities of Karlsruhe, Heidelberg and Stuttgart. I went to elementary school in Kraichtal and then to highschool, which was the Justus Knecht Gymnasium in Bruchsal.
I love walking and hiking, and I used to play chess while in Germany,
where chess is much more popular than in the States. I also love to be
active in various organizations and had a number of board or committee
positions, such as in the local
chess club in Kraichtal, or at UMass, the Physics Graduate Student
Association and the Graduate Employee
Oragnization. I also like computer games,
especially Clanbomber
and FreeCiv.
I did my undergraduate and graduate studies (which are usually combined in Germany) at the Department of Physics at the University of Karlsruhe, where I graduated with a Diplom (equivalent to Master of Science). Already during my time at University of Karlsruhe, I had participated in a one-year student exchange program and spent one year at the Department of Physics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Then I applied to UMass and got accepted, and was for one year enrolled in both places, before I first graduated from Karlsruhe and then UMass, where I received a MS and a PhD in physics.
In August 2004, a few months before I got my PhD, I married my wonderful wife Havva and we moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Havva got accepted to Harvard Law School, while I got a job as a post-doc at the Richard D. Berlin Center for Cell Analysis and Modelling (CCAM). Yeah, it is a hell of a commute, but I was allowed to work part of the week from home, which made it bearable.
Since my PhD I did some shifting of topic. While my PhD was on condensed matter physics, my first post-doc was on biological physics (membrane mechanics) and now I have moved further in the direction of systems biology. Why? I believe systems biology is the hot topic of the near future. While it is conceivably possible that my condensed matter research might lead to technological achievements improving the lives of people, the beneficial impact of systems biology is far more immediate. Essentially, we are made out of cells, and understanding cells means understanding ourselves. The biggest shot at curing diseases and prolonging and improving physical health is advancing in our knowledge of cells.
Besides, I do enjoy that now I can explain to people again, what my research is about. I mean, who knows what holes in a quantum antiferromagnet are? And how many people would not, when hearing of Bose systems, first think of music? Cells, on the other hand, are something most people have heard of before.
Plus, I have a passion for designing software. There is a joy about creating something active rather than passive. It is one thing to write a paper which then sits in libraries waiting to be read. It is another thing to have produced a software which runs when people push a button. Papers are completed, but software, if successful, will continue to be developed.
My current project has to do with the application of Semantic Web methods to biomedial and systems biology problems. In plain English: There are methods developed to lead to a vast improvement of in the exchange of knowledge, targeting primarily the world wide web, but useful for virtually any form of information exchange. It means roughly moving away from plain text searches to searches for specific content. For example, to put it simple, instead of just typing in Google the word "Java", you could make Google understand whether you are looking for the coffee, the programming language or the island.