1 Who are you?
I'm Thomas and I live with my family in a village between Cottbus and Spremberg, in Brandenburg. I grew up in Berlin and studied mechanical engineering in Dresden. Then I did my doctorate in Berlin and Barcelona in the field of computational mechanics: Roughly speaking, I established efficient computational methods, developed algorithms to simulate the strength of concrete. During this time, I realised how much I enjoyed programming - and so I joined ICO-LUX as a part-time developer. Now I programme in the mornings. In the afternoons, I take care of the renovation of our old house, the potato field, the chickens and, of course, our two children.
2 What exactly do you do?
At ICO-LUX, we work in an agile way and organise our programming work in sprints. So I do a bit of everything, depending on what makes sense at the time. I particularly like dealing with fraud rules, most recently in the banking sector. So I develop a lot for ICO.Fraud in the fight against credit application fraud.
3 What do you associate with ICO-LUX?
What I associate with ICO-LUX is that I have incredibly good working conditions here: When I started, we had just signed the purchase contract for the building and decided to leave Berlin. It was clear that I would not only want to work part-time, but also 100 per cent remotely. Despite this - or perhaps because of it - we are very efficient and successful as a team. My paper, my doctoral thesis - it was all very theoretical. But what I'm now programming is something really useful with a social impact that can be used quickly.
Photo: private (Thomas on his self-made swing)