Christian David is author or coauthor of more than 350 peer reviewed scientific publications (H-index 64) and holds 15 patents. The devices and methods developed by his group are applied at many large scale research facilities in photon science all over the world. Christian David is member of several international scientific committees. Most prominently, he is currently the chair of the Photon Science Committee advising the DESY research center in Hamburg on activities in the field of synchrotron and x-ray laser research. He was awarded the Röntgen Prize by the Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen for his work on x-ray phase contrast imaging (2010) and the Innovationspreis Synchrotronstrahlung by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (2018) for his developments in diffractive X-ray optics.