1971 Born in Karachi, Pakistan, Undergraduate studies in Biology at University College London, UK

1994-1997 PhD studies at Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London, UK

1998-2001 Postdoctoral fellow at EMBL, Heidelberg and the Adolf-Butenandt-Institut, Munich, Germany

2001-2009 Group Leader at EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany

Since 2009 Head of the Laboratory of Chromatin Regulation, Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics, Freiburg, Germany

Since 2013 Director at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics, Freiburg, Germany