Born 1961 in Vienna. Study of Mathematics, doctoral studies at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory EMBL, Heidelberg (1987-1991), PhD in Applied Mathematics at the University of Heidelberg (1991), postdoc at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles (1991-1993), and at the Research Centre for Information Technology St. Augustin near Bonn (1993-1995), Head of Theoretical Bioinformatics Department at the German Cancer Research Centre, Heidelberg (1995-2000), Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics (since 2000), Honorary Professor at the Dept. of Mathematics and Computer Science, Free University of Berlin (since 2001).