Alex's research focuses on the interactions and feedbacks between the atmosphere and the land surface and its ecosystems, and how the system responds to increasing CO₂. He studied Climate System Science at the University of Hamburg, Germany, and worked on the climate sensitivity of CO₂ fluxes from permafrost regions in his master thesis. In 2019, he completed his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI) under the supervision of Prof. Brovkin and Prof. Myneni (U. Boston) on the question of what causes the greening trend of the Earth's land surface in satellite observations and Earth system models. In 2020, he moved to the MPI for Biogeochemistry, where he established a junior research group focusing on the land-atmosphere coupling of carbon, water, and energy fluxes. The group uses and develops models of varying complexity that incorporate various Earth observation data streams through machine learning. In 2021, he was awarded the Feodor Lynen Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship to work with Ralph Keeling at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The project aims to understand what causes phase shifts in the seasonal atmospheric CO₂ cycle.