Then: Grew up at butt-end of the World, also called “small East German village”, total loser at school, then went out with little hammer & little chisel to help tear down the Berlin wall. End of communism resulted in beginning of creative freedom. Best thing ever, even learned something in school. Somehow ended up at university, studied biology, graduated, went with ship across the Atlantic (marine biology, yay!), chucked 20.000€ worth of sampling equipment into deep sea (hauled it up again, yay!), got some price fellowship from Caltech without realising they hand out only one per year, returned to Germany two years later.

Now: Adjunct professor in environmental microbiology; blogger for Nature and Spektrum der Wissenschaft, scribbler of things, workshop-giver on Creative Science Writing, mentor for the Afghan Women Writing Project, house-fixer-upper, typo-maker.