 From 2008-2010 he worked as Postdoc in the Jena Experiment at the Darmstadt University of Technology and Georg August University Göttingen, from 2010-2012 a Postdoc at the University of Minnesota and then at the Technical University of Munich where he was an Emmy Noether group leader.He then habilitated at the Georg August University Göttingen in Ecology and Zoology.From 2012 – 2014, he worked as Associate Professor for Terrestrial Ecology at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena.