I am a Professor of Knowledge Media at the Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, UK, and an Honorary Professor (2009-2014) at the Department of Computer Science, University of Waikato, New Zealand. I hold a diploma in Theoretical Physics (equivalent to MSc) from Freie Universitat Berlin and received my PhD (Dr rer nat) from Technische Universitat Berlin's Informatik Department for my work on the theory of artificial neural networks. Between 1999 and 2004 I held an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship at the Department of Computing of Imperial College London where I carved out my academic career from PostDoc (1997) to Reader in Multimedia and Information Systems (2005). My research has evolved over the years from theory of artificial neural networks over data mining and knowledge management to applications in multimedia search engines. At the Knowledge Media Institute I direct a small Multimedia and Information Systems team. I am still involved in the Multimedia Knowledge Management research network that I helped set up. Currently, I am Principal Investigator for The Open University in the European funded PHAROS project (2007-2009).
