ProductTransparency

Dec. 2008 – ongoing
The ProductTransparency is project that I started to make product information available for consumers by using semantic web formats and a Creative Commons license. The project is still in its early phase.

CouchSurfing

Aug. 2007 – ongoing
Technically speaking Couchsurfing is hospitality platform but in reality it is so much more. I am involved in local community issues.

First Online EMBL PhD Symposium – Life Sciences – Shaping the Future

Feb. 2006 – Dec. 2006
The First Online EMBL PhD Symposium took place on the web exclusively and the media file are now available for everybody interested. I was one of the organizers.

Web 2.0 and Science

May. 2005 – Jun. 2005
With three other members of the EMBL Biocomputing Unit I organized and gave a series of talks that took place in May/June 2006 about the influence of Web 2.0 on science to the broader audience at EMBL. You can download talk videos and presentation files.

My blog

2005 – ongoing
As you can see I have a blog which has posts about society, hacking, open-source, open content, politics and science.

7th International EMBL PhD Student Symposium – Biology At Work

Nov. 2005 – Dec. 2006
Over the past few years volunteering EMBL PhD students have organized an annual international PhD symposium. I was part of the organizing team for the symposium that took place in Nov./Dec. 2005 called Biology At Work which was dealing which the application of biological research.

PhD thesis – Metagenomics

since 2004 – 2008
The main focus of my research was Metagenomics. This was/is a new and very promising approach for getting new insights into microbial communities and their interaction with their habitats.

Diploma thesis – Comparative Genomics of the B. subtilis general stress response regulon

Dec. 2003 – Aug. 2004
The title of my diploma thesis at the Department for Microbial Physiology and Molecular Biology was "Phylogenetic analysis of the general stress response in bacteria". Based on the general stress proteins of the soil bacterium Bacillus subtilis I did a comparative analysis with about 30 bacteria.