Waltenegus came to Germany in August 2000 to pursue a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering at the Kaiserslautern University of Technology. Three months before he completed his studies he had got an offer for a PhD position at the University of Kassel. He joined the University in September 2002 but three years later, in November 2005, he joined the Dresden University of Technology, because he had got a better offer and working condition there. In June 2006 Waltenegus defended his PhD in Computer Engineering with magna cum laude at the Dresden University of Technology and took up a full-time research position at the same university. In 2010 Waltenegus obtained a Habilitation, the highest academic title one can get in Germany. Since then, he works as an Associate Professor and leads the Energy Lab. Waltenegus loves engineering and literature with almost equal passion. These two fields make his life very busy and exciting. He also enjoys running half-marathon twice a week. He published his first novel, The Eunuch and the King's Daughter, in 2005, and his first non-fiction, The Reason for Life, which analyses the life philosophy of Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Leo Tolstoy, in 2017. He published his second novel, ERMIAS, in January 2018.