1980 Diploma, University of Munich 1980-84 Doctoral thesis with Prof. Klaus Gollnick, University of Munich 1984-85 Postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Waldemar Adam, University of Würzburg 1986-87 Postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Dieter Seebach, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, DFG postdoctoral fellowship 1987 Postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Ernst Fischer, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel 1993 Visiting Professor at the Department of Chemistry, University of Wisconsin, USA 1996 Visiting Professor at the National Institute of Materials and Chemical Research, Tsukuba, Japan since 1994 Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Cologne, Germany 1997 Grammaticakis-Neumann Prize of the Swiss Society for Photochemistry and Photophysics 2000 Visiting Professor at the National Institute of Materials and Chemical Research, Tsukuba, Japan 2001-2004 Chairman of the Photochemistry Division of the German Chemical Society (GDCh) 2006 Visiting Professor at the Chemistry Research Promotion Center, NSC, Taiwan 2007-2010 Titular Member: IUPAC OBC Division and Subcommittee on Photochemistry 2009-2015 Dean of Studies of the Math.-Nat. Faculty of the University of Cologne 2009 Honda-Fujishima Award of the Japanese Association for Photochemistry 2012-2016 IUPAC: Secretary of the Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry Division; Member of the Subcommittee on Photochemistry since 2018: Chairman of the Subcommittee on Photochemistry of IUPAC