I grew up in Austria and studied Biology at the University of Innsbruck. For my diploma thesis, I went to Berlin where I worked in Ralf Schülein’s group at the Research Institute of Molecular Pharmacology investigating the intracellular transport of G-protein coupled receptors. After finishing my degree, I moved to London to study for my PhD in Sharon Tooze’s lab at Cancer Research UK’s London Research Institute, where I studied the fusion mechanisms of autophagosomes with early and late endosomes. Keeping in line with my interest in signaling and cell biology I then started as a postdoc in Victor Tybulewicz’s lab at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research – now the Francis Crick Institute – to work on the role of kinases in T cell biology.