He received his doctorate in physics from the University of Technology Dresden in 2005. From 2006 to 2007, he was a Feodor Lynen Fellow (Alexander von Humboldt Foundation) at the University of California, Berkeley. From 2008 to 2011, he worked at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His main interests are in materials physics of complex oxide materials, especially fundamental electronic, optical and magnetic properties of interfaces and topological structures.