About me…

I am professor of data mining at the Technical University of Dortmund.

I was a research and teaching assistant (PostDoc) at the Heidelberg University, in the Database Systems Group.
I did my PhD at the University of Munich (Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München), more precisely at the Research and teaching unit for database and information systems.
My PhD thesis had the topic: “Generalized and Efficient Outlier Detection for Spatial, Temporal, and High-Dimensional Data Mining”.
A list of my publications can be found on my university homepage.

What is “Vitavonni”?

Lightbulb Vitavonni, when read backwards, is “innovativ” — this is what I care about: being innovative, doing something crazy, something new, something different – but also something useful, to improve something. It’s not about just being different, but about being better.

Creativity, innovation, knowledge, information — thats what is giving me a kick, what is driving me forward. I’m always on the run for new things, deeper understanding and new insights.

I don’t like following existing tracks, but there is no need to repeat the mistakes of others either, but should try to learn from them and do things better. Therefore I don’t blindly trust existing knowledge, but I’ll willingly accept it as the best guess and working hypothesis often to be followed until there is some reason to doubt.