Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Innsbruck since 2003. He earned his PhD in 1994 from the University of Munich (LMU) and carried out postdoctoral research at Harvard University, Texas A&M University, and the University of Innsbruck. He was one of the founding directors of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on quantum information science, and he has made major contributions to the development of concepts such as the one-way quantum computer, the quantum repeater, and quantum reinforcement learning. He has received numerous distinctions, including an ERC Advanced Grant (2022), the Wittgenstein Award (2023), and the Erwin Schrödinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2024).