I studied physics in Munich at the University of Technology, Munich, at the Universita degli Studi di Pavia and at AT&T Research in Holmdel. During this time I was at the Maximilianeum München and the Collegio Ghislieri in Pavia.
In 1996 I received the Master degree at the University of Technology, Munich and in 1998 the Doctoral Degree in computer science at the University of Technology Berlin. Until 1999 I was a researcher at the IDA Group of the GMD Institute for Software Engineering and Computer Architecture in Berlin (now part of the Fraunhofer Geselschaft).
After that, I worked as a Researcher and Group Leader at the Research School for Information Sciences and Engineering of the Australian National University.
From 2004 onwards I worked as a Senior Principal Researcher and Program Leader at the Statistical Machine Learning Program at NICTA.
From 2008 to 2012 I worked at Yahoo Research. In spring of 2012 I moved to Google Research to spend a wonderful year in Mountain View and I continued working there until the end of 2014.
From 2013-2017 I was professor at Carnegie Mellon University. I co-founded Marianas Labs in early 2015.
In July 2016 I moved to Amazon Web Services to help build AI and Machine Learning tools for everyone.