Born 1970 in Minsk/Belarus. Study of physics and molecular biology in Moscow/Russia (1987-1993), PhD in biology Univ. of Regensburg (1997), postdoc at Harvard University/USA (1998-2003), junior group leader (2003-2009) and professor for molecular biology (2009-2013) at ZMBH Univ. of Heidelberg, Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology since 2013.