Annika Lohstroh grew up in central Germany, where she studied for her undergraduate Diploma in Physics at Göttingen University. She developed an interest in nuclear solid state physics during a 6 month exchange programme with the Catholic University Louvain (Belgium). Subsequently, she continued to study this area of physics that uses techniques originating in nuclear physics to investigate semiconductor properties, like hyperfine interaction methods and ion beam analysis.
She moved to Guildford during Summer 2002 and obtained her PhD at the University of Surrey, researching charge transport properties in wide band gap semiconductors for radiation detection applications, with a particular emphasis on chemical vapour deposited diamond. She extended these studies as a Research Fellow at the University of Surrey during the following years and was appointed as Lecturer in 2008, promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2013. Her scientific aim is to understand the limitations of current radiation detector performance and to find ways to overcome these limits.