About the Author
Name: Christian WillmesI have a diploma degree in geography with minor in computer science and cartography from the University of Cologne. Before I started with my studies in geography, I studied computer science at the University of Bonn. In this time I worked at ATELCO Computer GmbH as a service technician and later at the WDR in the Online Service Center (OSC) as a webdeveloper student assistant.
Since I changed my major to geography and migrated to the University of Cologne, I worked at the ZAIK of the Univeristy of Cologne, where I did some PHP/MySQL stuff as a student assistant. After that I took a job as student research assistant at the GIS & RS Group from the Institute of Geography. And for two year in between I had a second job at the Hydrology and Climatology Group of the Institute of Geography.
In my work as research assistant, I helped maintaining two computer labs with about 50 PC workstations, a set of servers (Linux and a Windows), I programmed ArcObjects Extensions for ESRIs ArcGIS in C# and VB and worked on several webmaping projects. I also seted up and maintained a EUMETCast moteorological satellite data recieving system via telecomunication satellite.
I was in 2007 a summer fellow at NOAA GLERL in Ann Arbor, MI, USA, where I worked on the visualization of surface current models for the Great Lakes Coastal Forecasting System (GLCFS), using IDL, KML and GoogleEarth.
In 2008 I was an intern at WhereGroup in Bonn, Germany, where I worked on an Openlayers integration to Mediawiki.
In 2009 I wrote my diploma thesis about web based visualization and distribution of 3D geodata with a focus on open standards, service oriented architecture (SOA) and spatial data infrastructure (SDI).
Since december 2009, I am a PhD candidate and scientific research assistant at the Institute of Geography of the University of Cologne and a member of the Integrated Research Training Group (IRTG) of the Collaborative Research Centre 806 "Our way to Europe".
In my work as a PhD canditate, I design and built the spatial data infrastructure for the mentioned CRC806 and work on a model for describing, and a software tool set to visualize and analyze, archeological excavation sites in distributed environments.
Beside my studies I love to do sports (especially soccer and running), I like to read good (counter culture) philosophy, psychology and popular science books. I am a big fan of Robert Anton Wilson and his writings. I also like the movies, for example „2001: a space odyssey“ (Stanley Kubrik), „Magnolia“ (Thomas Anderson), Mulholland Drive (David Lynch), Babel (Alejandro González Iñárritu), Short Cuts (Robert Altman) and many more. I also apreciate good documentary movies like „Zeitgeist“, „Mission 2018: odyssey to mars“ or „the myth of Osiris“ (search for this titles in your favorite torrent search engine to view them ;) ) to name just a few.
Cologne / December 2009,
Christian Willmes
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