Ulrich Pöschl studied chemistry at the Graz University of Technology in Austria and obtained his PhD in 1995 with Karl Hassler at the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry with a thesis on "Synthesis, Spectroscopy and Structure of selectively functionalized cyclosilanes ". From 1996 to 1997 he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the group of Mario J. Molina in the field of atmospheric chemical kinetics and mass spectrometry of sulfuric acid. In 1997 Pöschl became a research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in the Department of Atmospheric Chemistry and a researcher in the group of Paul Crutzen on the photochemistry of ozone,  organic trace gases and stratospheric clouds. From 1999 to 2005 he worked at the Institute for Hydrochemistry of the Munich Technical University, led an independent research group and became a chemistry professor with a thesis on "Carbonaceous Aerosol Composition, Reactivity and Water Interactions". In 2005 he returned to the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz and headed a research group in the Department of Biogeochemistry until 2012. Since 2007 Pöschl has also been teaching in the Department of Chemistry, Pharmacy and Earth Sciences at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz and habilitated in 2007 in Geochemistry.