studied Chemistry at the Ludwig Maximilans Universität München, Germany [Diploma 1992: Studies on the Antipodal Effect in Borane Clusters, Ph. D. 1995 in Inorganic Chemistry: Synthesis and Characterization of Boron - Nitrogen and Boron - Phosphorous Compounds; both supervised by Prof. Dr. Heinrich Nöth]. In 1996, he was performing post-doctoral research at the Institut für Chemische Technologie Anorganischer Stoffe, Technische Universität Wien, Austria, with Prof. Dr. Benno Lux on the CVD of superhard materials (c-BN and diamond). Then he started studies on main group and materials chemistry as well as the gas phase deposition of boron nitride phases at the Universität des Saarlandes and received his Habilitation (venia legendi) for Inorganic Chemistry in 2002 by mentorship of Prof. Dr. Michael Veith. From 2002-2004 he was filling in a vacant professorship in inorganic chemistry at the Technische Universität Kaiserslautern. In 2005 he was a visiting scientist / JSPS fellow at the National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan in the group of Dr. Hisao Kanda and Dr. Takashi Taniguchi working on the High Pressure High Temperature synthesis of superhard materials. He was continuing research on inorganic ring systems, precursor synthesis and CVD as a Privatdozent at the Universität des Saarlandes up to 2010, when he started cooperation with the MPI-P. For the fall semester 2010/11, he was filling in a vacant professorship at the Universität Regensburg and joined the Institute in 2011.