Professor of Materials Science (Chair in Mechanics of Materials) at Ruhr-Universität Bochum/Germany and Director at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Advanced Materials Simulation (ICAMS), heading the department Micromechanical and Macroscopic Modelling. From November 2005 to May 2008, Professor of Materials Science at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg/Germany. Research interests lie on micro-mechanical and scale-bridging modeling of deformation and fracture mechanisms of structural materials, constitutive modeling with crystal plasticity for monotonous, cyclic and high-temperature deformation; generation and virtual mechanical testing of synthetic microstructures representing real materials; application of inverse methods on micro- and nano-mechanical testing to parameterize material models; atomistic simulations of fundamental deformation and failure mechanisms.