“Tell us your story- how did your path lead you to Nanion Technologies?”

I came to Nanion pretty early in my career. When I studied Bioengineering, I had the chance to do my diploma thesis at Nanion. I was fascinated by electrophysiology, and the instrumentation behind it, so this topic was a perfect fit to my interdisciplinary scientific/technical field of study. Obviously, the enthusiasm was mutual since I got the chance to do my PhD in a collaborative setting with Nanion and the Munich Ludwig-Maximilian-University. During my PhD project I focused on method development for planar electrophysiology. In particular I worked with mitochondrial and bacterial channels. During the final years of my PhD, Nanion started to explore transporter electrophysiology and the SURFE²R technology was acquired. I was assigned to the task of learning the new technology and implementing new applications. Long story short: I kept doing it and am Product Manager of the SURFE²R family at Nanion for about 6 years now. Looking back, this was a great chance for me and I am happy that I took it. As a young graduate with interdisciplinary background this was the perfect place to be. I had the chance to be in a central position establishing a new technology at Nanion and, even better, develop it further. My time with Nanion was a really interesting journey so far, I learned a lot and got the chance to improve my social and technical abilities.

“Knowing what you know now, what 3 pieces of advice would you give your 21-year-old self?”

1. “Die anderen kochen auch nur mit Wasser“ – This is a German saying, translated literally: Everybody is just cooking with water. Meaning, in the end we are all the same, doing similar things. What looks impressive is usually no magic trick, so have some trust in your own abilities.
2. Don’t take life too seriously. You can’t predict or plan everything.
3. Remember advice number one, and don’t be too impressed by some semi-smart life advice from your 35-year-old self. Make your own experiences, because that is what life is about. (Wonder what 70-year-old me would say about that….)

“One Last Question- what’s the coolest thing about your job?”

Being a person with a quite broad range of interests I love that I got and still get the chance to live up to this at Nanion. Now, after so many years with the SSM-based electrophysiology I am in the process of starting with something new, and since nearly a year I am also involved with software development.