He obtained his Ph.D. at Caltech in 2005, working on nonlinear optics in ultrahigh Q microresonators. From 2005 to 2010 he was an independent Max Planck Junior Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ), studying optical frequency comb generators and optomechanics with microresonators. In 2009 he obtained his Habilitation degree from Munich University. In 2009, Tobias Kippenberg was the recipient of both the Helmholtz Price for Metrology and the European Physical Society’s Fresnel Prize.