I am professor of Translational Neurosurgery, affiliated at the Medical Center Freiburg and Northwestern University in Chicago. My research is focused on multi-omic data analysis and in-silico modeling of high-dimensional biological data and development of neocortical model systems for investigation of microenvironmental impact on the tumor evolution and immunity. In my doctoral thesis, I studied epigenetic regulation of brain tumors and its impact on transcriptional plasticity. As a postdoc, I have worked in Irina Mader’s group on the investigation of radiogenomic modeling and metabolic alterations of malignant gliomas. Driven by the desire to study the importance of the brain microenvironment, I then established the basic research branch of the Translational Neuro-Oncology Research Group at the Medical Center University of Freiburg. The primary objectives of my research group are to develop novel approaches to accurately map the transcriptional diversity of the cellular state and spatial organization of tissue architecture. We combine single-cell RNA sequencing with spatially resolved multi-omics including transcriptomics, metabolomics and proteomics to gain spatial insights into the complex cellular state and plasticity within the diseased. As a physician-scientist and neurosurgeon, I am particularly interested in glioblastoma, the most common brain tumor without any effective therapy.