After studies of physics at the Universities of Hamburg and Heidelberg, Germany I started my graduate work at the University of Heidelberg at the intersection of atomic physics and high energy physics. My thesis work was on establishing a world leading limit on a process on the lepton number violating process in the leptonic sector. These experiments brought me to extended research stays to the Paul Scherrer Instittute, Villigen, CH and the Rutherford Appleton Lab, Chilton, UK. Postodictoral work lead me to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA, USA, where I worked on optical two-photon spectroscopy of ultracold trapped hydrogen, a system in which we achieved Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC) in 1998. In 2001 I moved to the Netherlands to accept a position to build a facility for studies of Fundamental Interaction and Symmetries with radioactive Atoms (TRIμP). We initiated experimental research radioactive atoms for the study of Lorentz symmetry violation, observation of parity violation in atomic systems and searches for permanent electric dipole moments in a number of systems. In 2014, I joined the Van Swinderen Institute for Particle Physics and Gravity as a founding member. We continue research on the questions of fundamental symmetries in the Standard Model with experimental approaches and theoretical descriptions.

The focus of the research is on testing predictions of the Standard Model of Particle Physics, which is our currently best model of the physicsal world. Such test require a well chosen quantum mechanical system, which can be experimentally studied at a suffcient precission. My interest is on the design of suitable experimental strategies and the execution of these. The experimental methods are selected from  fields like particle physics, atomic and molecular physics, laser physics and quantum mechanics. Examples from my work are setting limits on lepton number violations from searches for muonium-antimuonium conversion, Bose-Einstein condensation, in particular of atomic hydrogen, the weak interaction in atomic systems (Atomic Partity Violation, APV) such as single trapped radium or barium ions, and searches for permanent electric dipole moments on fundamental particles (EDMs) in e.g. radium, xenon or molecules like BaF.

Within the NL-eEDM collaboration we have designed and build a sensitive new setup, which is starting to produce the first results on an electron EDM. Further research interest is in new strategies towards precission measurement of the magnetic anomaly (g-2) of the muon.