He was appointed adjunct professor at the same university in 2011. After spending a year (2011/2012) as task force leader at the Joint European Torus (JET) in Culham, UK, he returned to Germany to became head of the ITER Physics Department at EFDA, the European Fusion Development Agreement (2012/2013). Since 2014, within the framework of a dual appointment, he has been a professor at TUM and head of an independent research group at IPP. In the same year he was listed as one of the 'Highly Cited Researchers' (ISI list, category: engineering).