Diploma and Ph.D. degrees in physics from Philipps-University, Marburg, Germany, in 1992 and 1995, respectively. Assistant professor and senior postdoctoral researcher at TU Darmstadt, Germany, from 1995 to 2004 and at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, from 2005 to 2007. Postdoctoral stay at ATR Labs in Kyoto, Japan, in 1999. From 2007: full professor (chair) for photonics and integrated systems at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, U.K. Since 2009: research professor (CSIC) at the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems, IFISC (UIB-CSIC). Research on nonlinear photonics and neuro-inspired information processing, with particular focus on emission properties and dynamics of modern photonic sources, coupled laser systems, synchronization of lasers and neurons, information processing, machine learning and the utilization of chaos. Principal investigator of 19 national and European projects, >100 peer-reviewed publications, Co-Organizer and Chair of several international conferences, (Co-) supervisor of 16 PhD theses, >60 plenary or invited talks at international meetings. Research Prize of the Adolf-Messer Foundation in 2000 and the first Hassian Industry Cooperation Prize of the Technology Transfer Network in 2004.