Thomas Berghöfer studied Physics and Astrophysics at the universities of Marburg and Bochum, and received his PhD from the Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich. During his active research career he was working in X-ray and EUV astronomy at the Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, the Space Sciences Lab of UC Berkeley, and the observatory of University of Hamburg. Later he became a science programme manager in the German research funding system of the federal government and has coordinated larger consortia in Europe. Currently, he is the coordinator of the EU-funded GENERA project.