I am a Full Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science at the Department of Advanced Computing Sciences (DACS) at Maastricht University since 2009. I had been the Chair of DACS from 2010 to 2020, and I am a co-director of the Swarmlab robotics laboratory. From 2014 to 2017 I was a Honorary Professor at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Liverpool (UK).

Before joining Maastricht University I was the Scientific Director of SCCH GmbH (Austria), where my main responsibilities were e.g. the supervision and control of R&D projects for companies, the national and international positioning, strategic alignment, research and innovation management, coordination of funding acquisition, and industrial and scientific networking. Before that I was Assistant Professor at the Computer Science Department at Technical University Munich (Germany), where I headed the AI/Cognition research group at the Chair for Theoretical Computer Science and Foundations of Artificial Intelligence. I received my PhD in Computer Science from Technical University Munich and the Habilitation Degree from Johannes Kepler University Linz (Austria).

I have been engaged as a scientific consultant for various European companies, including e.g. Siemens and EADS, and as an advisory board member of companies of different size. A particular focus of this engagement has been on the bi-directional know how transfer among industry and academia.