He studied biochemistry at the University of Cologne and graduated in 2006 with a PhD; his dissertation was an open source tool for molecular biology called GENtle.

[8] Manske has worked in Cambridge with the Wellcome Sanger Institute since April 2007,[9][10][11][12][13] but remains active in the development of tools for Wikipedia[14] and its sister projects Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons.

[15] In 2012, Manske was co-author of a paper published in Nature that demonstrated new ways to identify areas where malaria parasites are evolving, and described techniques for mapping malarial drug resistance.

The researchers developed a technique to extract the malaria parasite DNA directly from the blood, which minimizes errors in sequencing.

[20] Phase II also introduced a number of other features which are still present, including file upload, watchlists, automatic signatures, and user contributions list.

[22][23] Manske's re-write also made it easier to integrate photographs in Wikipedia articles, and created a new user group: administrators, empowered to delete pages and block vandals.