During his PhD, he worked on the proteotoxicity of polyglutamine expansion proteins. He graduated summa cum laude from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. In 2007, he received a Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship from the Humboldt Foundation to join the lab of J. W. Harper at the Harvard Medical School in Boston.
During his post-doctoral studies he became interested in autophagy and performed a systematic analysis of this fundamental cellular homeostasis pathway by employing complementary proteomics, genetics and biochemical approaches. In 2010, he became an independent group leader at the Institute of Biochemistry II at the Medical Faculty of the Goethe University Frankfurt and headed an Emmy Noether Research Group of the DFG. He recently moved to the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich where he was appointed as W2 professor.
His lab is interested in various aspects of autophagy. In particular, his group aims at determining the dynamic organization of autophagy signaling complexes and their regulation by posttranslational modifications in response to different physiological conditions.