Marcus is Director for International Affairs with Africa, the Near and Middle East at the German Research Foundation (DFG). His team facilitates scientific collaborations between researchers at German institutions and their peers in the region. Instrumental for this are regional research funding and collaboration networks as well as the Global Research Council (GRC), for which he serves as a member of the Executive Support Group.

Education: University of Aachen, Germany (Diploma in Physics); University of Marburg, Germany (PhD in Neuroscience); Postdoctoral research at the Research Centre Jülich, Germany. He has published in Neuroscience using electrophysiological and functional imaging (fMRI) methods in animal and human visual systems. His research targeted the development of a visual prosthesis and the understanding of the human visual system with regard to its functional delineation as well as neural correlates of joint attention.