I am professor and chair of Computer- Supported Cooperative Work at the Faculty of Media and Vicerector of the Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany (links in German).

The research is based on a Human-Centred Computing perspective---that is, I aim to make a technological contribution by developing technological concepts, platforms, and systems based on an understanding of how people interact with and communicate through computing technology.

I am head of the Cooperative Media Lab (CML) which I founded in 2003 and where our projects are focused on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Human-Computer Interaction (HCI, User-Centred Design), Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp), and global Internet-based information systems. For instance, we have recently been participating in the EU-project Adaptive Learning Spaces. We currently have a funding from the German Research Foundation for the DFG-project Recommender Systems. We are winners of the 'Innovation Contest Industry Meets Academia' ('Innovationswettbewerb Wirtschaft trifft Wissenschaft') and received this award and kicked off the funded project TransKoop in 2008. I was the Opening Keynote Speaker at the 9th International Conference on Innovative Internet Community Systems (I2CS 2009) and at the International Conference on Interfaces and Human-Computer Interaction (IHCI 2008).

From March 1999 to July 2003 I was involved in several projects while working at Fraunhofer FIT. For instance, I was coordinating the activities in the EU-project CYCLADES; I was part of the EU-project TOWER and the project NESSIE coordinated by Wolfgang Prinz at the CSCW Department of the Institute of Applied Information Technology (GMD.FIT) at the German National Research Center for Information Technology (GMD) (GMD was integrated into Fraunhofer in the year 2000). In the years 1993-1999 I was working with Roland Traunmueller at the Institute of Applied Computer Science (later called 'Institute of Informatics in Business and Government') at the Johannes Kepler University of Linz in Austria.

I have written a broad range of papers for journals and reviewed international conferences, books chapters, etc.; and some position papers for Workshops.

I am an expert member of the IFIP Technical Committee on "Human Computer Interaction" (TC.13); and a member of the IFIP Workgroup on "Education in HCI and HCI Curriculum" (WG13.1). I am a member of the Steering Committee (Leitungsgremium; in German) of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work of the Germany Informatics Society (Gesellschaft fuer Informatik). I am a member of the ACM and of EUROMICRO.

I am a member of the editorial boards of several journals ; I have been co-chairing a number of conferences and workshops (e.g., I am program co-chair of ACM Group 2010, and of INTERACT 2009); and I have been a member of several program committees.

I am teaching CSCW, HCI, and Ubiquitous Computing---mainly at the Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany, but also at various other universities across Europe. Details about my teaching in Weimar can be found here (in German). One of our recent highlights is the new post-graduate Master's course on MediaArchitecture. computer-supported cooperative work, cscw, human-computer interaction, hci, computer-human interaction, chi, group awareness, collaboration technology, human factors in computing systems, computers and society, blog, blogging, virtual, communities, social software, thueringen, informatik, mediensysteme, medieninformatik, thomas gross