Born 1966 in Koblenz, Germany. Studies in biochemistry in Bayreuth, doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt/Main (1996), postdoctoral work at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg. Head of an independent research group (2000) and Senior Group Leader (2005) at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute (2000), Director at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine and Professor for Vascular Biology at the Westphalian Wilhelms-University since 2007.