He received his Bachelor of Science at the Technical University Munich (2005) and his PhD at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Cornell University (2010). In 2010 he established his own laboratory at the Institute for Virology of the Freie Universität Berlin and was appointed as an assistant professor for "molecular tumor virology" in 2011. He is currently a Lichtenberg professor endowed by the Volkswagen foundation. His main focus is on herpesvirus pathogenesis, virus-induced tumorigenesis, latency and virus integration. For his work, he received a number of awards including the "Robert Koch Post-doctoral Award" and the "Young Investigator Award" of the German veterinary society (DVG). His research has been funded by grants from the German Research Foundation (DFG), European Research council (ERC), European ERA-Net grants and the NIH.