After graduating from high school, he initially trained as a farmer. This was followed by a degree in agriculture with a focus on livestock science at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (CAU). He received his doctorate there in 2001. He then spent two and a half years at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences near Oslo. His research there focused on the design of sustainable breeding programs with particular attention to inbreeding. In 2007, he moved back to Kiel, where he completed his habilitation at Kiel University in 2012 with a thesis on inbreeding indicators and the optimization of selection procedures. His research then focused on population management in small populations. From 2016 to 2018, he was head of the Department of Livestock Breeding at Humboldt University Berlin.