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I was born in 1969 in Basel (Switzerland), where I spent my youth (in this part of Switzerland people speak a special kind of German dialect called Swiss-German; however the written language is German). I am citizen of Basel (lying at the Rhine in Switzerland) and Rovereto near Trento (Italy). My mother, Erika Aste-Burkhard was born in 1936 and grew up in Zürich, Switzerland. My father was born in Isera, Trento (1930) and immigrated to La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, in 1948. I have two elder sisters, Carla and Silvia.

After normal high-school I joined the University of Basel, where I studied theoretical physics and astronomy. In 1993 I received there the diploma in theoretical physics. My diploma thesis dealt with electron-positron pair production in relativistic heavy-ion collisions, a process which plays an important role for future particle colliders. It is this process which limits the maximum beam luminosity that can be reached at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider, CERN) for heavy ion collisions. Around 2008, experiments should start at CERN with the aim to investigate a new state of matter, the so-called quark-gluon plasma.

Then, I went as a PhD student to the University of Zürich. There I received the PhD title in 1997, for a work entitled "Two-loop diagrams in causal perturbation theory ", which dealt with a special dispersive method to calculate so-called Feynman diagrams. Till 1998, I stayed at the University of Zürich, working mainly on a new concept of dealing with quantum gauge theories.

During the following three years, I was involved in a research project at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ), which dealt with the numerical simulation of semiconductor devices operated at high frequencies like the High Electron Mobility transistor (HEMT) or Gallium-Arsenide MESFETs.

In 2001, I joined the particle physics group of Prof. Dr. Dirk Trautmann at the University of Basel, where I became a Privatdozent in 2008.

Since 2010, I am a nucleonics lecturer at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), the biggest research institute in Switzerland which belongs to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH).
In 2020, the leaders of the nuclear power plants in Switzerland decided to establish an independend school for the education of nuclear operators, therefore I transferred my bureau away from the PSI to Baden, Switzerland.

Among many other things, I like music, especially: The Beatles (Revolver, 1966), Bob Dylan (Greatest Hits, 1967), Pink Floyd (Dark Side of the Moon, 1973; Wish You Were Here, 1975; The Wall, 1979), The Alan Parsons Project (Pyramid, 1977), Billy Joel (Piano Man, 1973; The Stranger, 1977), Cat Stevens (Tea for the Tillerman, 1971; Catch Bull at Four, 1972), Genesis (Nursery Crime, 1971), The Doors (The Best of, 1985), Leonard Cohen (Greatest Hits, 1975), Jim Croce (Smash Hits, 1989), Michael Oldfield (Platinum, 1979), Manfred Mann (Watch, 1978, Chance, 1980), BAP (vun drinne noh drüsse, 1982), Nirvana (Bleach, 1989), Rage Against the Machine (Rage Against the Machine, 1993), ELO (The very best of, 1993), Alanis Morissette (Jagged Little Pill, 1995).

I am left-handed, like Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Napoléon Bonaparte, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Marilyn Monroe and Jimi Hendrix were, and Paul McCartney, Bill Clinton, Gerhard Schröder, Whoopi Goldberg and Bill Gates still are ...