I was born and raised near Munich, Germany, and earned my PhD in cancer research from the University of Heidelberg in 1988. I completed postdoctoral research training at Columbia University in New York in 1991 and became a Research Scientist there. From 1992 to 2003, I worked for the Max Planck Institutes in Munich and Bad Nauheim and earned my habilitation at the University of Marburg in Germany. In 2003, I joined the Indiana University School of Medicine as a faculty member, focusing on cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases, including COPD. Beginning in 2025, I accepted a position as Senior Research Professor Emeritus (after retiring from my academic appointments at the end of 2024) to focus on my start-up companies and research collaborations. With a molecular research focus on vascular pathology of cardiopulmonary diseases, my teams and I published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in highly visible journals such as Cell, PNAS, JCI, and Circ. Res., leading to five US patents. After developing a neutralizing antibody that can reduce tissue-destructive pathologies in cardiopulmonary disease, NIH-funded research enabled one of our start-up companies (Allinaire Biotech) to move closer to clinical trials. Our interest in exosomes and their viral biology led to another start-up company, Allvirex Inc. With Allvirex, we aim to employ extracellular vesicle engineering to cure cardiopulmonary diseases linked to viruses.