CV

Education

2006 – 2011

PhD, Eindhoven University of Technology

  • Dissertation topic: Model-driven Design of Self-observing Products (at Electronic Systems Group)
  • This work is being carried out as part of the “Managing Soft-Reliability in Strongly Innovative Product Creation Processes” project, sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs under the IOP-IPCR program. This page gives more detail and the project website hosts both joint publications, detailed information on developed tools and further material.

2000 – 2006

Diplom Informatiker (M.Sc. equivalent, Computer Science), RWTH Aachen

Professional experience

since 2011

Postdoctoral researcher, Eindhoven University of Technology

since 2010

CoFounder, UXsuite

2007 – 2008

Visiting researcher, Philips Consumer Electronics

2006

Student worker at Research Group Software Construction (Prof. Lichter)

  • Project ViPER (UML2 Modelling Tool)

2004 – 2005

Internship at Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR), Kyoto, Japan

  • Project SoFA (Sonifier of Facial Actions)
  • Project VideoBrowser (Facial Motion Analysis and Browsing Tool)

2005

Student worker at Chair of Technical Computer Science (Prof. Kraiss), Research Group Man-Machine Interaction

  • Project Reviser (Expert system based user agent, system evaluation)

2001-2004

Student worker at Chair of Technical Computer Science (Prof. Kraiss), Research Group Man-Machine Interaction

  • Project TREVIS (Tool for Rapid Evaluation of Interactive Systems)
  • Project StateShade (GUI-Prototyping tool based on templates and statemachines)

since 2001

Freelance web design consultant see projects for more information

  • Programming of front-end and back-end, Content Management Systems, Databases
  • Information Architecture, Usability, Accessibility, Design

Skills

Languages

German (native) and English (fluent) – you might want to try Dutch, French or Japanese, but if you expect a reasonable answer, please refer to the first two.

Supervision + Project Management

In my main research I supervised several students on different levels (1 BSc, 2 MSc., 2 Post graduate trainees) in Electrical Engineering, and I co-supervised Industrial Design students (2 BSc., 1 MSc.) in the context of the Visual Canon project.

Programming

Since I was a teenager, I have been programming in various languages, starting with C and C++ (including a short trip into Assembler). While studying computer science I used Java for almost every implementation task, having C and JESS (LISP) as a backup for the rest. (Well, there were the occasional programming assignments in the supervisor’s language of choice, good to see, hard to build fluency within those short tasks.) Close to the end of my studies, I used more and more modeling in implementation work, getting to know UML 2 (not just diagramming, more the superstructure and the like), the concepts of model-driven development (MDD) as well as design patterns. Besides that, while doing my thesis, I extensively used the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF), openArchitectureWare (OAW), and later the Graphical Modeling Framework (GMF).

Web

A few years ago, shortly after a new millenium burned millions of $currency for fireworks, I found interest in web programming, starting with a few small websites and learning all the relevant concepts from scratch plus web standards, usability experience, and lots of browser compatibility practise. Meanwhile, I almost work daily with (X)HTML, XML, JavaScript, PHP, and SQL (MySQL), although selecting the weapon of choice from a ever growing set of frameworks, plugins, and off-the-shelf systems became an equally challenging task. So far, there have been content management systems (CMS), blog engines, JavaScript frameworks such as YUI, Scriptaculous/Prototype, JQuery, and finally CakePHP as the swiss army knife for all kinds of database-driven web projects.

Tools

The modern tasks of telling machines to do something would not be so easy and productivity would be lower, if it were not for environments that help to build. The day starts with Eclipse, sometimes Visual Studio, in rare cases with Rational Software Architect and Netbeans. Other than that, MS Office is in daily use, working with Visio now and then. I feel at home both in Mac OS X and Windows, though their taste of interior differs. However, Linux is fine, too.

Interactive Systems and Music Production

For interactive systems (such as my second current research project) I love Max/MSP, Jitter, whereas, in Japan I worked with OpenCV to do lots of nice video processing. If you study the projects section sound design and music production have dominated my hobby activities since 1996 approx. I have been using Reason, Live, and more recently (and exclusively) Logic. Results (if not contract work) show usually up at Foramel (check artists: Bassfrucht, Susususosu).

Awards

Best paper award for “Improving Product Usage Monitoring and Analysis with Semantic Concepts“, UNISCON’09, Sydney 2009

Bundeswettbewerb Jugend Musiziert (German Youth Music Competition)

  • 2nd prize in 1996 (percussion group)
  • 3rd prize in 1998 (drums)
  • 1st prize in 1999 (ensemble new music)