I am a scientist at the European Bioinformatics Institute in Cambridge, UK, where I lead the Electron Microscopy Data Bank project, a 3D image data base of molecular and sub-cellular structures.

For a long time, I used to be a computational theoretical physicist working in high-energy and nuclear physics, but my main interests now are in software engineering and computer science, as well as in advanced mathematical and statistical methods.

From September 2010, I will be working for Google in London. (Unfortunately, my role at EBI did not quite evolve the way I hoped, and when Google contacted me and made me an offer, I could not resist).

EMDB, the project I am currently working on, is an example of how computational science can contribute to life sciences. We are not only a central storage and exchange facility for the results of biological electron microscopy labs all over the world, we also provide standardized description and visualization of biological experimens, facilitate the definition of standards and best practices, and interact closely with other bioimage informatics groups. In particular, we also provide quality assessment using manual curation, and I hope grid and cloud computing and storage will play a major role in the future when more automatic quality assessment algorithms become viable.

Before joining EBI, I was responsible for image processing and computing at the Department of Molecular Structural Biology of the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried.

In previous lifes, I worked in bioinformatics and LMU Munich, in high-performance computing in Jülich/Aachen, in theoretical physics in Frankfurt and Boston, and in visualization in Berlin.

I hold a Dipl.-Phys. and a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt.