What I most enjoy about this work is sitting at the intersection of people and the technologies they use every day trying to understand how interfaces shape behaviour, and designing new ones that make a difference for people. The short version is that I build things with smart people, across disciplines, and try to ask questions that matter beyond the lab. What follows is more of a run-down of my CV.
I am a Professor of Computer Science at the University of St. Gallen (HSG), where I lead the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) group at the School of Computer Science and serve as Academic Director of the Bachelor & Master in Computer Science a programme that combines a rigorous technical curriculum with content from entrepreneurship and business innovation in a configuration unique in Europe. I also am a visiting Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) in Abu Dhabi, where I contribute to research and teaching at the intersection of HCI and human-centred AI at the worlds first AI university.
Prior to my appointment in St. Gallen, I established the HCI research group at the University of Bremen, supported by a Lichtenberg Professorship from the Volkswagen Foundation. During my time in Bremen, I served as director of the Bremen Spatial Cognition Center (BSCC) and as a board member of the Leibniz Science Campus for Digital Public Health and the Center for Computing Technologies (TZI), as well as an affiliated researcher at the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM). Before Bremen, I held a faculty position at Hasselt University in Belgium, before I helped to establish the Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Cities at UCL during my PostDoc, where I remain a visiting researcher at UCLIC. I am also a visiting professor at the Interactive Technologies Institute (ITI) in Portugal.
I received my PhD in Computer Science from Saarland University in 2010, completed at the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) in Saarbrücken and supported by Deutsche Telekom Laboratories in Berlin. I hold a Diplomin Geoinformatics from the Institute for Geoinformatics at the University of Münster, awarded in 2007.
My research has been recognised with a number of awards, among them the ACM Eugene L. Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions within Computer Science and Informatics, a Vodafone Research Award, the Lasting Impact Award at ACM MobileHCI, and two Google Research Awards. Beyond academia, I am the founder of Qkies, the world’s first eSweet, and I regularly advise companies and think tanks on the societal impact of emerging technologies.
Our work has also been covered in a wide range of media outlets, including Der Spiegel, heise online, WDR, Deutschland Funk Kultur, the Volkswagen Foundation magazine, and various national and international newspapers and broadcasters. Journalists and media professionals interested in discussing our research particularly on the societal impact of navigation technologies, human-AI interaction, or the design of future user interfaces are invited to contact me by email. For all other enquiries, please also feel free to get in touch.