​​I grew up in Cologne, Germany, and also studied biology at the University of Cologne. I graduated with a Diplom in genetics in 2004, analyzing segmentation genes in the beetle Tribolium in the group of Diethard Tautz.

For my PhD I changed subjects and organisms: my thesis was about the role of duplicated genes in speciation in the house mouse. I am interested in the application and development of bioinformatics to biological data. After my PhD I worked on several next generation sequencing projects as a bioinformatician for the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology.

At KAUST I work on coral genomic projects, applying my expertise in the analysis of large sequence datasets​