I was born on January, 11th 1965 in Bonn. After finishing the Realschule in Beuel, I decided to leave the school in the age of 16 to do a 2 years traineeship in horticulture, followed by 1 year in school again to get my “Fachabitur”. Then, I completed a fifteen month military service at the German Air Force in Budel (Netherlands) and Mechernich (Eifel). After this, I worked 29 months in a nursery in Alfter nearby Bonn, before I moved to the “Pflanzenschutzamt” at the “Landwirtschaftskammer Rheinland” in 1988. In July 1990, I went for 2 years to the “Rheinische Akademie” in cologne to become a Biologic Technican. After getting my certificate in 1992, I moved to the “Max-Planck Institut für Züchtungsforschung” in cologne. In the the first year there, I had a contract with KWS, Einbeck, then this was changed to one with the Max-Planck Institute. My task there was to find molecular markers to support the breeding of rizimanaia- and cercospora-resistant sugar beets. In 1995, I moved to the Weissheimer Malzfabrik in Andernach, one of the worlds biggest malting companies, that was founded in 1864. The company had a subsidiary called Maltagen Forschung GmbH, which developed a method to transform barley very efficiently. Maltagen developed transgenic barley plants that produce valuable human proteins, technical enzymes and nutraceuticals in the seeds. The advantage in comparison to many other expression systems was the very high yield of recombinant protein in the grain. From 2001-2009 I worked at Maltagen as a project manager. In July 2009, Maltagen had to file for insolvency and was closed a little bit later. The reason for this were the very complicated regulations for transgenic plants in the European Union, that made it impossible to find a new investor. From March 2010 until today I am working at the Institute of Innate Immunity of the university of Bonn for Prof. Eicke Latz. Beside this position, I worked in a secondary employment for IFM Therapeutics from 2017-2022.
