Born 1959 in Salt Lake City, USA. PhD at Univ. California Berkeley, USA (1985), research stays at the MPI for Fluid Dynamics Göttingen, Univ. Kaiserslautern, Catholic University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, Professor Univ. California, Santa Barbara (1988-2010), Full Professor (since 1996), Director and Scientific Member at the MPI for Biophysical Chemistry (1996-2021), since 2022 Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences. Professor for Physical Chemistry, Univ. Göttingen (since 2010). Numerous prizes and awards, among them the Presidential Young Investigator Award oft he National Science Foundation, the Humboldt Research Award (1998) and an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship (2010).