My interest in ecological, agricultural and biophysical research was initially risen by Prof. Michael Evenari from the former Department of Botany at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His research farm in the Negev desert is known as one of the centres of modern ecological research, particularly with respect to gas-exchange analytics and plant-water relations. It has attracted many researchers to study plant physiological ecology under field conditions. A collaborative research program on flux control in biological systems was established during the early eighties with the University of Bayreuth, in which I participated from 1984 till 1985 (Prof. Horn, Prof. E.D. Schulze, German Science Foundation SFB 137). I attended Prof. Evenari's seminars on a diverse range of scientific disciplines.

I have a six-year experience in practical agriculture. From 1981 till 1983 I worked in Israel in the irrigation team of Kibbutz Gevim and as a field worker in the citrus, avocado, and banana plantations of Moshav Liman. I started my agricultural apprenticeship in mid 1985 at the teaching and experimental farm of the German Agricultural Extension Service (Haus Duesse) and finished it two years later on a family farm. I got acquainted with most areas of practical field and animal farming during this time. Furthermore, I also gained experience in field crop research, animal breeding and meat quality testing.

Due to my rising interest in agricultural and environmental research I decided to study international agriculture at the former Faculty of International Agriculture at the University of Kassel in Germany. It offered a balanced combination of theoretical and applied studies, which I very much enjoyed between 1988 and 1992. I focussed on crop production in the Tropics and Subtropics, irrigation, and resource engineering. In 1990 I joined the Department of Environmental Physics at the Research Organization of the Israel Ministry of Agriculture at Bet-Dagan for a five month practical (Dr. S. Moreshet, Prof. M. Fuchs, Dr. Y. Cohen). I wrote my first thesis on the determination of actual transpiration based on these studies. Prof. P. Wolff and Prof. S.C. Jutzi were my supervisors.

I collected my first teaching experience towards the end of my first study, when Prof. Wolff asked me to hold student tutorials about irrigation management at the Universities of Kassel and Goettingen. I also developed a lecture about the foundations of agricultural meteorology during this time, which I held as part of the lectures on agricultural physics.

I studied environmental science at the University of Kassel from 1993-1995. Due to my interest in ecophysiology and water resources, I emphasized on the ecology of streamwater sites. Other interests were in waste-management and environmental chemistry. I contributed to a number of seminars on diverse ecological issues during this second study, which I completed after one and a half years with a thesis on hydrological optics and microclimate at stream water sites. I increased my student budget as a caterpillar driver in a research project which dealt with eliminating groundwater seepage at an organic waste plant of the city of Kassel during this study.

In 1993, Prof. M. Fuchs (ARO, Israel), Prof. H. Bergamaschi (UFRGS, Porto Alegre, Brazil) and me planned a research on the improvement of agricultural system management based on meteorological data. It was funded with 499.000 Geman Marks by the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation. Prof. S.C. Jutzi was the leader of this project, which was marked by a very harmonic collaboration among all partners. Three master thesises and four PhD dissertations on the energy and water balances of field crops were based on the project's outcomes. Two postdoc students took part in the studies. In 1996, I participated in an international conference on evaporation and irrigation management, organized by the ASAE, ASA and IA, in which I presented some of the results of our project. I concluded my PhD study in 1997 with a summa cum laude degree. Prof. P. Wolff supervised my work and I am very thankful for his open and friendly support.

During my post-doc from 1998 till 2000 I worked in the coordination unit of a collaborative research team of the Faculties of Agronomy and Biology at the University of Kiel in North-Germany (Prof. Hanus, German Science Foundation SFB 192). It was my task to integrate the research of this 10 year project and to use the results for validating contemporary cropping systems models. In 1999, I participated in an international symposium on modeling cropping systems which took place at Lleida in Spain, where I presented our results. I used the new contacts I had made during this conference to plan a follow-up project which was funded with 468.000 German Marks by the German Environment Foundation .

In autumn 2000 I was invited to become a research assistant at the Faculty of Horticulture at the University of Hannover to strengthen the international contacts of its vegetable department. I was involved in administration and student teaching (calculus and statistics, production ecology and crop modeling).

I am currently a Juniorprofessor at the Humboldt-University of Berlin. Its Faculty of Agriculture and Horticulture established a chair of Modelling Plant Systems, which I am representing from teaching and research point of views since 2003. The juniorprofessorship program has been started as a pilot project by the German Ministry of Science to promote young scientist's earlier independance in research and teaching. My position was successfully reviewed in 2005. The review committee was composed of 11 internal and external members. It concluded that my current research adresses challenging issues which are at the forefront of agroecological research. I am one of the most popular lecturers at our faculty according to regular anonymous student rankings. I am currently involved in five research collaborations in the areas of plant modelling, agro-ecological systems analysis, plant stand microclimate, soil-physics, agro-forestry, precision-agriculture, and irrigation management.