I was born and raised in the beautiful state of Bavaria in southern Germany.

From 1993 onwards I studied computer science at the University of Munich, getting my diploma (~ masters degree) in early 1999. Immediately afterwards I began my PhD studies at the database systems group of the same department.

After graduating in 2004, I spent two years as a post-doctoral researcher at the IBM Almaden Research Center in the Intelligent Information Systems group, before moving to the Helsinki Institute of Information Technology. Since 2011 I am at explido.