About me

• On a sunny day in may, I was born in Wuerzburg, Germany.
  
  
• From April 2008 to April 2010, I was a postdoc at Caltech in the group of John Preskill.
  
  
• From July 2004 until the 27th of february 2008, I was a PhD student at CWI. PhD thesis "Cryptography in a Quantum World" as a pdf.
  
  
• I studied computer science at the University of Amsterdam, and graduated in June 2004 (MSc in Computer Science, thesis). From the Royal Dutch Society of Sciences I received the Bakkenist Jong Talent Afstudeerprijs for the best Computer Science master student in the Netherlands (ILLC Annual Report).
  
  
• In a former life, I was into computer and network security. Among other things, I wrote an article about FreeBSD Kernel Rootkits which forms the basis of a forthcoming book by J. Kong and has been covered in Phrack Vol 0x0b, Issue 0x3f. I also used to work as a hacker for ITSX.
  
  
• Before entering university, I've worked as a system administrator/programmer, for example for XS4ALL Internet. I made various kinds of publicly available software, e.g. for FreeBSD and PHP (now part of the distribution).
  
  
• I love electronic music and occasionally still play records at various events and on the radio. I also enjoy climbing and have an interest in the behaviour of parrots.