Professional Experience

since 07/2017	Research Group Leader (tenured since 07/2022), Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) Vienna. Visiting Fellow, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Canada.
07/2015 – 06/2017	Assistant Professor (tenure track) and Canada Research Chair in the Foundations of Physics, Departments of Applied Mathematics and Philosophy, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada. Associate Faculty member, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.
09/2013 – 05/2015	Junior Research Group Leader, Institute for Theoretical Physics, Heidelberg University, Germany.
11/2010 – 08/2013	Postdoctoral fellow, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Canada.
10/2007 – 09/2008	Postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig (on leave from my position at TU Berlin).
11/2004 – 10/2010	Research Assistant (“Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter”), Institute of Mathematics, Technical University of Berlin, Germany.

Education

11/2021	Habilitation, University of Vienna, venia docendi in Theoretical Physics. Title of thesis: Reconstructions of Quantum Theory.
09/2007	Dr. rer. nat., Technical University of Berlin, with distinction (summa cum laude). Title of thesis: Quantum Kolmogorov Complexity and the Quantum Turing Machine. Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Ruedi Seiler.
09/2004	Diploma in Physics, Technical University of Berlin, very good.
10/1998 – 09/2004	Studies of Physics and Mathematics in Erlangen, Stony Brook (NY), and Berlin.
08/1997 – 09/1998	Replacement for military service: care for mentally and visually disabled children, Blindeninstitutsstiftung Rückersdorf.
07/1997	Abitur, Paul-Pfinzing-Gymnasium Hersbruck, Bavaria, Germany, 1.0 (best possible grade).

Awards

07/2020	First Prize at the FQXi Essay Contest on “Undecidability, Uncomputability, and Unpredictability”, for this essay. Among >200 participants, two first prizes of $10,000 each were awarded (the other one went to Prof. Klaas Landsman).
12/2019	Best Paper Award 2019 by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, for this publication. Awarded annually for the best paper by any researcher under 45 who works with the Academy in any area of the sciences, mathematics, medicine, or engineering.
07/2016	Birkhoff-von Neumann Prize for “outstanding scientific achievements in the field of quantum structures”, see here.
2002-2007	Scholarship by the Studienstiftung (German National Academic Foundation).
05/1998	First prize at the German youth science contest “Jugend forscht” in mathematics and computer science. Exceptional prize by the Federal President (unique among >6400 participants of all research fields).
05/1995	Second prize at Jugend forscht in mathematics and computer science. Exceptional Prize by the Federal Chancellor, Talent Identification Program at Duke University, USA.

Third-party funding

04/2024 – 03/2026	Principal Investigator project on Generalized contextuality in large quantum systems. €380,256 from the Austrian Science Fund FWF.
05/2021 – 04/2025	Stand-Alone project on Black-box quantum information under spacetime symmetries. €599,634 from the Austrian Science Fund FWF.
09/2020 – 08/2022	FQXi Grant (Foundational Questions Institute) and from the Fetzer Franklin Fund on Mathematical models of idealism and dualism: an adversarial collaboration, jointly with Prof. Kelvin McQueen (Chapman University, CA). USD $31,728.
11/2018 – 08/2020	FQXi Large Grant on Where agents and algorithms meet – free will and computational irreducibility. USD $65,544 from the Foundational Questions Institute.
12/2016 – 08/2019	Grant by the John Templeton Foundation on Quantum Causality. USD $2,500,000 for 10 research groups aorund the world: Bob Coecke and Jonathan Barrett (Oxford, UK), Lucien Hardy and Rob Spekkens (Perimeter Institute, Canada), Giulio Chiribella (Hong Kong), Mauro d’Ariano and Paolo Perinotti (Pavia, Italy), Gerard Milburn (Queensland, Australia), Časlav Brukner (Vienna, Austria) and my group at Vienna.
11/2016 – 03/2019	FQXi Large Grant on Emergent objective reality – from observer states to physics via Solomonoff induction. USD $101,574 from the Foundational Questions Institute.
04/2016 – 06/2017	Discovery Grant on Quantum correlations in the context of spacetime physics. CAD $160,000 for five years (discontinued due to move to Vienna). From the government of Canada via NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council).
07/2015 – 06/2017	Canada Research Chair (tier 2) in the Foundations of Physics. CAD $500,000 for five years (discontinued due to move to Vienna). From the Government of Canada via NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council).
10/2007 – 09/2008	Advanced research and training grant by the Max Planck Society. €14,400 to do research at the MPI for Mathematics in the Sciences (Leipzig) for one year.
01/2007	Scholarship by DFG and DMV for a one-month research visit to the US (IQI Caltech, and AMS Meeting, New Orleans).
2004	Science journalism scholarship from the Dr. Alexander and Rita Besser-Stiftung (turned down in favor of Research Assistant position).

Further Scientific Activities

Currently	VCQ Board Member (Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology, representative of ÖAW); Member of Steering Committee, International Centre for Theory of Quantum Technologies, Gdańsk; Member of Erwin Schrödinger Center for Quantum Science & Technology (ESQ), Vienna Doctoral School in Physics (VDSP), Quantum Aspects of Spacetime Research Network (TURIS), Vienna.
Since 2023	Public outreach: Talks about quantum physics and Bell’s Theorem in schools via ÖAW’s “Akademie im Klassenzimmer” (so far: Borg3-Gymnasium, Billroth-Gymnasium, Wien). Lange Nacht der Forschung, Vienna.
Since 2023	Member of selection committe for the Austrian “Studienstiftung”, supporting talented young students.
12/2019 – 11/2023	Associate Editor, Foundations of Physics (Springer).
Since 2015	External Dissertation Committee Member: Gaurav Saxena (University of Calgary) 2022, Fabian Clivaz (University of Geneva) 2020, Cristina Cirstoiu (Imperial College London) 2019, Carlo Maria Scandolo (University of Oxford) 2018, Daniel Ebler (Hong Kong University) 2018, Joshua M. Luczak, Jared Richards, and Saad Anis (University of Western Ontario, Canada) 2015-2016.
Since 2014	Program Committee Member of various conferences: TQC (Theory of Quantum Computation, Communication and Cryptography) 2023, Foundations 2023, QIP (Quantum Information Processing) 2014.
Since 2014	(Co)-Organization of several conferences: Vienna Quantum Foundations Conference 1+2 (2021 and 2024), Mind and agency in the Foundations of Quantum Physics (Chapman University, 2022); Algorithmic information, induction, and observers in physics (Perimeter Institute, 2018); Information Theoretic Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics (Rotman Institute of Philosophy, 2016); Information Theoretic Foundations for Physics (Perimeter Institute, 2015).
Since 2007	Reviewing for various journals (Physical Review Letters, Nature Physics, Nature Communications, Quantum, Communications in Mathematical Physics, New Journal of Physics, Annals of Physics, IEEE Transactions on Communications, …) and grant agencies (Swiss National Foundation, Canada Research Chairs Program, Polish National Science Center, …).

Biography

I must have inherited this passionate curiosity, and so I became a nerdy teenager with a love for math, physics and programming. These were not particularly popular hobbies (to put it mildly), and there were no academics in my family. But I was lucky enough to discover the German youth science competition “Jugend forscht”, and participating opened up a whole new world for me: I met wonderful people my age who shared the same passion.  Winning a national second prize at age 17, I was sent to the USA for a one-month stay, helping excavate Anasazi remains in New Mexico. At age 20, I won a first prize, and was lucky enough to meet the brilliant mathematician Dierk Schleicher, who helped me write up my kid stuff in a professional way.

At the same time, a completely different experience changed my view of life. I spent a year taking care of children and young people with multiple disabilities as a substitute for military service. What I was experiencing felt so much more meaningful than all the academic nonsense. For example, spending several hours trying to persuade five-year-old Nadine to drink water, just enough to survive. Or getting little blind Felix to enjoy going for a walk by letting him touch everything – flowers, walls and nettles. I felt grateful and humbled and painfully made aware of my own limitations, flaws and privileges.

These experiences sent me down an exciting but uncomfortable path. Theoretical quantum physics seemed extraordinarily meaningful and deep to me, but my interests and inclinations put me in a tense position between the chairs of math, physics and philosophy. I wanted to discuss with the best minds, but I hated the idea of elitism. I loved the abstraction of mathematics, but I felt the urgent need to understand something concrete about our role as sentient beings in this universe. There was a flood of questions that all started with “why” and not “how”. In a sense, this is the situation I still find myself in today.

I started studying physics in nearby Erlangen, but then moved to Berlin, where Karl-Eberhard Hellwig and Ruedi Seiler taught quantum information theory, and to a city with a thriving subculture of students and artists. We all enjoyed the freedom of the urban wasteland (still resulting from Germany’s reunification), prioritizing creativity over money in a way almost unheard of elsewhere.  In science, I was very happy for the opportunity to work with Jens Eisert, who inspired me with his inexhaustible energy and wealth of ideas.

When I visit Morsbrunn today, my grandfather is sorely missed. But it is heartwarming to see my son and daughter walk the same paths as I walked back then, but now with my father. I hope that I will be able to help them find their own ways, which may be very different from mine. But I can’t help but be optimistic that they will find their answers to questions that I didn’t even dare to ask.