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

I got to know Nanion Technologies during one of my first Biophysical Society meetings in the USA where I got scanned by Andrea for their newsletter as I just had started my PhD studies using patch clamp on inward rectifiers. During following meetings I got to know more and more Nanion people and realized Nanion and its employees as members of the ion channel family.

I grew up in the picturesque area of the Moselle river valley that I left rather early to become a laboratory assistant in Chemistry and then studied Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the Science Academy/University of Applied Sciences in Isny, Germany. Looking back, my professional career was initiated during my Diploma thesis at the University of Arizona in Tucson, USA where I worked as DAAD-student. Inspired by my supervisor, who encouraged me for an academic career I decided to apply for a PhD program and finally became admitted at the University of Jena. I was lucky to have a great supervisor again and got fascinated by the world of ion channels and its im-portance in health and disease. l continued to teach physiology and work on structure-function relationships in K-channels as a post-doc and later at the University of Kiel. At that time, I decided to leave the academic path and took a dual career offer to join Nanion in 2014 together with my wife, who is also still part of the team heading the consumable production actually. We had great support by Andrea, Niels and Michael that helped us to get settled with our little family. This was at least 10 years after I had signed up for the newsletter at their booth and I was more than happy to get a position where I could bring in my understanding of patch clamp and ion channels and even have the privilege to participate in research and supervision of students. Since then, I could gain so much knowledge on so much different ion channels and their applications in drug discovery, but also could develop myself as an employee/person to work together with the team and make Nanion steadily grow and improve to support our customers.

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

1. Be true to yourself, follow your goals, it often means hard work, but stay on your road despite drawbacks which will make you stronger in the long run.
2. Make mistakes, ask questions and stay curious – do not let any bias impair your judgement.
3. Be natural and treat people with trust, respect and kindness as it will echo back on you.

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

I really like the diversity and excitement of my job paired with continuous learning and increasing my knowledge about ion channels in close relationship with our customers. The coolest thing indeed is that I can do that in an environment of a great team with amazing spirit where I also have space to develop myself and take responsibility.