I was educated in Germany and studied at the Universities of Bochum and Bonn. I was a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University (February 1999-January 2000), Cambridge University (February 2000-December 2002) and Oxford University (January 2003-February 2004) before I moved to a lectureship at the University of Sheffield.

I am working in the field of cosmology, which is the study of the universe as a whole. I am interested in the question whether there are extra spatial dimensions and what the implications for the big bang theory are. My other field of interest is 'dark energy', which is the phenomenon that the expansion of the universe is accelerating instead of slowing down. This can be explained by either postulating a new, elusive and strange form of energy which pervades the universe or due to modifications of Einstein's theory of gravity. I am investigating the observational consequences of these theories.