I have been living in Italy (again after 15 years) since October 2014. I am at LENS in Florence where I lead a laboratory that works with cold and controlled molecules, and high resolution spectroscopy. On the one hand we develop new tools to deal with neutral, polar molecules, like microstructured Stark decelerators, optical dipole traps, microwave cavities; on the other hand we apply such techniques to molecular spectroscopy to improve accuracy and precision of the measurements. This latter activity is also related to research in photonics and metrology.

During my PhD with Ludger Wöste at the Free University (2007) I did spectroscopy on cold (4-20 K) cluster ions. After that, I moved to Tokyo for a postdoc with Tamotsu Kondow at the Clusterlab of Genesis Research Institute. There, among other things, I worked at the design of a setup to trap cluster ions in helium droplets (0.4 K). Then I went back to Berlin as a group leader in the department of Molecular Physics of the Fritz-Haber-Institut der MPG with Gerard Meijer to work on cold molecules (10-50 mK). So my career up to now has seen a progressive lowering of the temperature at the approximate rate of 1.5 K / yr.