I've always wanted to be an expert on tadpoles. I've always fancied being a tadpole expert. It's a wonderful life if you become an experty tadpoleous, as they are known in the trade. You get invited to all the smart parties and social gatherings.Peter Edward Cook: "The Tadpole Expert" (1964)

I have been working with various kinds of creatures during the last years, including mammals, birds and amphibians. These were all fascinating animals, however, my basic interest was always aimed at the ecological question behind the projects. Still, I must admit the Madagascan herps I was working with during my PhD project were very impressive. Who ever will spent a night in tropical rainforest will surely agree.
I indeed enjoy planning and conducting field work. A bit of adventure is always welcome. However, collecting data in a proper way is most important to me. The same is true for later analysis which need to be performed the best way possible.
Additionally, I always enjoyed teaching science to others (I like talking in general). This took most of my time in the last just more than two years as I was holding a position as lecturer at the Institute of Genetics at University Munich. I was busy in courses like Genetics 1, Genetics 2, Biology for Medical students, Analysing quantitative genetic data (statistics), and co-supervising some other small ones. The statistics course I have completely set up myself . It went very well so I even won a price with it. So this is quite a different field compared to the subject I was dealing with before. But it is a lot of fun. During my PhD studies I was also (co-)teaching some statistics as well as some zoology, literature work and publication, morphological-phylogenetical practical course, and a behavioural ecology seminar.
My family has moved close to Tübingen for professional reasons. Therefore, I unfortunately had to cancel my position in Munich.
Since December 2014 I am working at the Medizinischen Fakultät, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen. One of the main topics of this work is evaluation. My work includes projects from the BMBF-Project MERLIN
To keep running my own teaching activities I am still offering courses such as a 5-day stats course as freelancing lecturer.

Beside science, my main hobby is my family. We have a son who receives most of the time available. Whenever I find the time I do some endurance sport (i.e., running) or hike(d) in the Alps. I am always looking for special adventures. There was a 24hours hike in the “Schwäbische Alb” (72km, roughly 2200m difference in altitude) early 2014. In May I have also finished my annual 100km hike around Jena for the seventh time (in 20h:15min). In October I finished my first marathon: the Schwarzwaldmarathon (black forest marathon) with 630m difference in altitude took me 4:15:10h and more than 4000kcal. I have finished 2014 – in terms of endurance sport – running the Nikolauslauf in Tübingen (half marathon, 319 m difference in altitude, 1:53:37). The highlights of 2015 will follow after I have finished the Nikolaus run 2015.