Oliver Reiser was born 1962 in Hamburg, Germany. He studied chemistry at the Universities of Hamburg, Jerusalem, and CaliforniasLos Angeles (UCLA) and obtained his Ph.D. in 1989 at the University of Hamburg under the supervision of Armin de Meijere. He spent one year as a postdoctoral fellow with Robert Miller at the IBM Research Center, San Jose, CA, and one year with David Evans, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. In 1992 he joined the University of Go¨ttingen as Assistant Professor,finishing his habilitation in 1995. In 1996 he moved to the Universita¨t Stuttgart as Associate Professor and in 1997 to the University of Regensburg as Full Professor. His research group is involved in the development of methods for stereoselective synthesis and catalysis, application of nonconventional methods such as high pressures in catalysis, and peptide chemistry using unnatural amino acids.