I am a theoretical physicist and lecturer in astrophysics, cosmology and heavy-ion physics.
I started working on theoretical hypernuclear structure and the properties of exotic multihypernuclear systems in my PhD at the University of Frankfurt under the supervision of Horst Stöcker and Walter Greiner.
My first post-doc was at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen where I started to work on neutron stars implementing my knowledge on hyperons in dense matter from my PhD work.
Then I moved to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the USA and worked with Norman Glendenning, a leading expert on neutron stars, on kaon condensation in neutron stars.
Afterwards I was a post-doc at the RIKEN BNL Research Center at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the USA under the leadership of nobel laureate T.D. Lee. My research activities included work on quark stars, scaling relations and dibaryon production relevant for the relativistic heavy-ion collider RHIC.
After research stays at the Columbia University and Stony Brook in New York I returned as a university lecturer to the University of Frankfurt. My research included now topics as phase transition in neutron stars, and the in-medium properties of D-mesons for heavy ion physics.
Then I followed an offer from the University of Heidelberg for a professorship for four years. My research interests now turned to investigating the impact of the QCD phase transition for supernova explosions and the early Universe.
I returned again to the University of Frankfurt where I got tenured and received the title of a professor. Presently, I am working on the equation of state for neutron star mergers and the properties of twin stars, compact stars with a phase transition in their core.