He received his PhD in 2008 from the Fritz-Haber Institute of the Max-Planck Society. After his post-doctoral research with Professor Angelos Michaelides at the London Centre for Nanotechnology, University College London ended in 2011, he joined Peking University, where he currently focuses on developing/applying methods, using concepts from quantum mechanics to statistical mechanics, for computer simulations of material properties. Using these methods, he studies several physical/chemical problems, including chemical reactions on surfaces, phase diagrams of hydrogen and water, electronic excitations in semiconductors and topological insulators.