The focus of my research is the structure of atomic nuclei in the regime of very unbalanced proton and neutron numbers. Short-lived radioactive nuclei that contain many more neutrons than protons often reveal surprising properties: Their shape and excitation pattern as well as the energy and occupation of their quantum mechanical orbits by protons and neutrons is significantly altered as compared to stable nuclei. My group uses nuclear reactions to probe such changes in the nuclear structure. Since our nuclei of interest are short-lived and cannot be made into targets, the beam is made up of them. We have at hand an arsenal of different reactions to probe specific nuclear properties. These include scattering as well as reactions that remove or add a nucleon. The experimental challenge now is two-fold: We must identify all reaction residues (particle spectroscopy) and identify the final state they were left in (gamma-ray spectroscopy).