Born 1965 in Ludwigsburg. Study of physics in Stuttgart and Aachen, doctorate at the University of Cologne (1994), research at the Simon Fraser University Vancouver, Canada, Fellowship of the National Sciences and Research Council of Canada (1994-1996), staff scientist at ESPCI, Paris and Institut Curie, Paris, CNRS scientist at the Institut Curie, Paris (1998-2002), Habilitation at the University of Paris VII, honorary professor at the TU Dresden (2002), Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden (since 2001).