Following National Service as a nurse in a surgical hospital in Erlangen, he studied Civil Engineering at the Technical University of Munich,[5][6][7] where he graduated in 1990[5][6][7] with a "Diplom Ingenieur (Bauingenieur)"(Eq.
Prior to concluding his studies in Munich, he was sent to the Ecole National des Ponts et Chaussee[5][6][7] as an exchange student, and completed his Diplomarbeit (Master's Thesis) at the Laboratoire central des ponts et chaussées [fr] (LCPC) in Paris (now IFSTTAR), the Central French Civil Engineering Laboratory.
He continued his studies at Ecole National des Ponts et Chaussees, as a research assistance at LCPC, receiving a Docteur-Ingenieur[5][6][7] degree (eq.
[21] This nanogranular origin was found to drive much of the strength and durability performance of cementitious materials, such as the long-term creep behavior[22] and fire resistance.
[25] In 2008, he joined forces with a group of physicists and computational material scientists to combine experimental nanoindentation investigations with molecular and meso-scale simulations of cement hydrates.
The basic concept of creating a supercapacitor from simple cement materials and carbon black has been demonstrated, but the technology is far from being a fieldable product.