His main research interest is the study of strongly interacting systems, mostly using string theory, and in particular, holography, as his tool. He did his undergraduate studies at the University of Würzburg, received his M.A. in physics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1996, his Ph.D. in physics from Humboldt University in Berlin in 1998, and joined the University of Washington in 2002 after postdocs at MIT and Harvard.