I studied and graduated in Chemistry and did my PhD in Chemical Engineering. Built my first computer in the 3rd year of study and developed some interfacing to lab equipment and control software. Got fascinated by the possibilities of simulation and learned the importance of the correct description of basic phenomena on the outcome of simulations (garbage in - garbage out).

In 1989 near the end of my PhD study I moved to Oldenburg in northern Germany. Since April 1989 I have a permanent position at the University of Oldenburg in the group of Prof. Gmehling.

In the same year I co-founded DDBST GmbH (www.ddbst.com). This company today is the most well known provider of thermophysical property data and estimation methods for process simulation and further applications in safety, environmental protection, ....

Since the 80's I teach many courses on applied thermodynamics for chemical process simulation for external participants from industry both in Oldenburg and in-house for companies in Europe, the US, Middle East, South Africa, Japan, ... (alone or together with Prof. Gmehling).

A further role in professional life is a honorary Prof. position in Durban, SA. Currently my group there consists of 4 MSc and one PhD student, all highly motivated. We developed and published estimation methods for a number of important properties like vapor pressure, liquid viscosity, ... The first of our methods on normal boiling point is already generally regarded as the primary and best method available.

• Development and construction of a fully automated apparatus for the measurement of very high precision vapor-liquid equilibria (key property for the simulation of distillation columns, the most frequently used and one of the most energy consuming unit operation in chemical and petrochemical industry.
• Development of a software package (ARTIST) for the estimation of thermophysical properties from molecular structure together with W. Cordes.
• Development and implementation of a data regression software for different types of phase equilibrium and excess properties of mixtures used by many companies worldwide. I am the main and only software developer for this package.
• Development of estimation methods for thermophysical properties of pure components.
• Improvement of mixture models (FLEXQUAC).
• Test and further improvement of quantumchemical methods for property estimation (COSMO-RS(Ol))