He joined the group of Anton Zeilinger at the University of Vienna in 2002 with a Feodor Lynen PostDoctoral Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

He became Universitätsassistent at the university and then, Junior, later senior researcher, at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences where he is leading a research team working on quantum effects in micro- and nanomechanical systems.

He was awarded the Lieben Prize in 2007 and an ERC Starting Independent Researcher Grant in 2009.

For his work in quantum optics, quantum information and quantum-opto-mechanics he has received the Fresnel Prize of the European Physical Society, the Ignaz Lieben Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Fritz-Kohlrausch Prize of the Austrian Physical Society.

Together with Garrett Cole, co-founding partner of Crystalline Mirror Solutions (CMS), he received the second prize of the Berthold Leibinger Innovationspreis in 2016 for the development of substrate-transferred crystalline coatings.