I grew up in the South of Germany, and spent most of my years during medical school there as well, aside from various trips abroad to Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University and the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa.

In 2000 I started my doctoral work under Prof. Weller in the Department of Neurology, University of Tuebingen. My thesis dealt with the role of the non-classical MHC class I molecule HLA-G in human brain tumors and inflammatory myopathies. After graduating in 2004 I started my residency in the Department of Neurology at the University hospital Tuebingen before I joined Dr. Kuchroo's lab as a postdoctoral research fellow in May of 2007.

My main research interest lies in studying the cellular mechanisms involved in the autoimmune response to CNS autoantigens, in particular the role of Th17 cells and regulatory T cells.