Team

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Schwotzer — Programme Director

Prof. Dr. Thomas Schwotzer has been working as a professor at HTW Berlin with a focus on mobile applications since 2008. His research interests are in the field of decentralised, mobile, semantic systems, the Semantic Web of Things and in historical geoinformation systems.

Prof. Thomas Schwotzer studied computer science at the Technical University Chemnitz and worked as a research assistant at the Brandenburg Technical University Cottbus. He received his Dr. Ing. degree from the Technical University of Berlin with a thesis on decentralised semantic systems. His first appointment as a professor led him to the Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences in 2005. Prof. Thomas Schwotzer has worked as a developer, project manager, product manager and head of research and development for IT companies in Berlin and Munich.

Modules:

Mobile Computing
Project Studies on Contemporary Topics
Project Study

Jette Wienprecht — Programme Manager

Jette Wienprecht is supporting the Pro ITD team as programme manager. She is responsible for contacts with prospective and current students with regards to organisational questions as well as programme marketing and the alumni network. She wants to enable students to experience an enlightening Master’s programme at HTW Berlin, to build lasting and valuable connections and to enjoy the amenities of Berlin.

Before joining HTW Berlin, Jette Wienprecht has been working for six years as project manager for an educational institution. Here, she was conceptualising conferences and trainings for experts from international organisations, European ministries as well as national public services. Jette Wienprecht graduated from Science Po Strasbourg and Jagiellonian University Kraków.

Prof. Dr. Andrea Knaut

Prof. Dr. Andrea Knaut has been teaching at HTW Berlin since 2015. Her area of expertise lies in multiple fields: informatics & society, cultural informatics, philosophy, biometrics, data protection, computer science didactics, privacy. Teaching and research activities focus on foundations of database design, gender equality in computer science, makerspaces & citizen science, basics of computer networks, data ethics.

Prof. Andrea Knaut earned her doctorate in natural sciences (Dr. rerum naturalis) at Humboldt University Berlin (thesis “Failures of Fingerprint Identification Systems”). Also she has a diploma in computer science at Humboldt University Berlin and intermediate diploma in philosophy at Free University Berlin. Prof. Andrea Knaut participated in various projects. Other than that she is a freelance software engineer in many software development projects, a spokesperson of the section Internet & Society in German Society of Informatics, and a lecturer at Humboldt University Berlin.

Prof. Andrea Knaut’s work and research experience is remarkable and provides students with much to learn. Here you can find the full overview of Prof. Dr. Andrea Knaut’s experience.

Module: Data Ethics, Privacy and Governance

Nico Schönnagel

Nico Schönnagel has been teaching the IT Infrastructure module at HTW Berlin since 2018. He shares his knowledge of agile methods and cloud infrastructures.

Nico Schönnagel studied business informatics at HTW Berlin. He is the Founder and Head of the Berlin office of OEV Online Dienste GmbH (a company of the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe). Here, he coordinates the development of innovative digital solutions across all areas of the software landscape, with a focus on cloud solutions. Nico Schönnagel is also a speaker at various software conferences.

Module: Cloud Computing

Thomas Berger

Thomas Berger has been teaching requirements engineering at HTW Berlin since 2022. His areas of expertise are product management, project management, requirements engineering.

Thomas Berger studied computer science at Humboldt University. He is a senior product and project manager at BIOTRONIK SE & Co. KG, where he coordinates projects, project portfolio of hardware and software products for electrophysiology, and also performs as a connectivity expert.

Thanks to his experience in the medical device industry, particularly with one of global medical device companies, Thomas Berger provides students with an in-depth knowledge of requirements engineering, from ideas to product requirements.

Module: Requirements Engineering

Cristian Grozea, PhD

Cristian Grozea has been teaching data science at HTW Berlin since 2022. His area of expertise: machine learning, signal processing, computer vision, natural language processing, quantum computing.

Cristian Grozea obtained his PhD from the University of Bucharest, where he studied computer science, with a thesis on algorithmic information theory.

Cristian Grozea taught AI, web programming, and algorithms for more than ten years at University of Bucharest. Since 2007, he has been a researcher at the Fraunhofer Institutes FIRST and later FOKUS, focusing on applied machine learning. Other than that, Christian Grozea trained a team to participate in the International Collegiate Programming Contest under the auspices of Association for Computing Machinery (ACM ICPC), and the team was ranked 4th in the ACM ICPC World Finals in 1999; for the applied research for Fraunhofer he was ranked 1st in the international plagiarism detection challenge in 2009.

Published works:

Subject-independent mental state classification in single trials

ENCOPLOT: Pairwise sequence matching in linear time applied to plagiarism detection

Finding optimal parameter settings for high performance word sense disambiguation

Can machine learning learn a decision oracle for NP problems? A test on SAT

Module: Data Science

Dr. Oliver Grasl

Dr. Oliver Grasl has been teaching enterprise architecture management at HTW Berlin since 2019. His expert knowledge lies in the areas of enterprise architecture management, big data analytics, computational modelling.
Dr. Oliver Grasl holds multiple degrees: MA in Mathematics from Cambridge University, Master of Science in Mathematics from Innsbruck University, Executive MBA in Business Engineering from University of St. Gallen, Doctor of Economics from University of St. Gallen.

Dr. Oliver Grasl is co-founder and managing director of transentis consulting, which specialises in transforming enterprises using expertise in enterprise architecture, enterprise analytics and transformation management. He also lectures on big data analytics at further universities in Berlin. 

Dr. Oliver Grasl passes to students his strong theoretical background, as well as strong experience in applying that knowledge to practical situations in enterprises of all sizes through hands-on exercises and case studies.

Enterprise architects must be good at two skills: to capture the essence of the enterprises they are trying to understand, redesign or even transform, i.e. they need to see the big picture; to communicate that big picture to all relevant stakeholders and help them make the right decisions. These skills make you valuable to the organisations you work for, whatever your concrete role. My objective is to put my students on the right path towards mastering these skills.

You can view Dr. Oliver Grassl's work here: BPTK, an open source computational modelling packageblog.

Module: Enterprise Architecture Management

Ralf Lemp

Ralf Lemp has been teaching at HTW Berlin since 2022. His areas of expertise are general management and digital transformation.

Ralf Lemp holds a Master's Degree in Business Administration from THM Giessen. He has more than 30 years of experience as a CEO, COO and business consultant with focus on digital transformation, cloud computing, agile management, scrum, marketing, sales, business development, new work, leadership, XRM, CRM, HR in international and national companies. After several years working abroad, Mr. Lemp is back in Germany.

With knowledge from Ralf Lemp, students will also sharpen their ability to turn strategy into delivering performance.

Module: IT Controlling

Prof. Dr. Helena Mihaljević

Prof. Dr. Helena Mihaljević has been professor of data science at HTW Berlin since 2018. Her professorship is associated with the Einstein Center Digital Future. Her teaching and research activities focus on statistical data analysis, applied machine learning and information retrieval.

Prof. Dr. Helena Mihaljević studied mathematics at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. She received her doctorate in mathematics from the University of Liverpool in 2009 on topological dynamics of entire transcendental functions. She worked as a research assistant at the Mathematical Seminar of the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, as editor and deputy head of department at FIZ Karlsruhe - Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure and as Senior Data Scientist at The unbelievable Machine Company in Berlin.

Modules:

Project Studies on Contemporary Topics
Project Study

Alexander Röll

Alexander Röll has been supporting Pro ITD students at HTW Berlin since 2022. His areas of expertise are IT solutions architecture and infrastructure, project management, as well as developing and deploying infrastructures in environments. Alexander Röll has experience working with cloud-native solutions such as AWS and cloud-agnostic solutions such as Kubernetes and their infrastructure-as-code frameworks. Alexander Röll also has experience in back-end development, including database technologies, application network communication, and stream processing. He shares this knowledge to help students better understand how to build reliable and high-performing applications in a variety of environments, as well as how to create IT solutions from scratch, such as those based on customer needs.

Alexander Röll studied business informatics at HTW Berlin. He is currently working as a cloud solutions architect at OEV Online Dienste GmbH.

It is always a concern of mine to motivate people in my projects to do what they do because they enjoy it. I find computer technologies, especially at the enterprise level, very exciting and I'm always looking to translate that enthusiasm into cool project results that are fun for all project members.

Module: Project Study

Prof. Dr. Frank Fuchs-Kittowski

Prof. Dr. Frank Fuchs-Kittowski has been teaching environmental informatics at HTW Berlin since 2009. His research and teaching activities focus on web technologies, mobile computing (mobile sensing, mobile augmented reality), software engineering and modelling, collaboration systems (knowledge work, crowdsourcing, citizen science), data analytics and machine learning.

Prof. Frank Fuchs-Kittowski studied computer science at TU Berlin and computational linguistics at Manchester University. He received his doctorate in computer science from TU Berlin on cooperative knowledge work. He worked as a research assistant, project manager and group leader at Fraunhofer ISST in Berlin.

Knowledge which Prof. Frank Fuchs-Kittowski shares with students help them to develop a skill to act in a solution-oriented manner in different contexts and to develop innovative ideas and concepts.
At present Prof. Frank Fuchs-Kittowski has more than 200 publications.

Module: Project Study