Bernhard Seybold
For over twenty years now, I am spending most of my work time during day (and sometimes night) directly or indirectly with computers. As for so many, it all started with a Commodore 64, which I received for my 15th birthday. Since then I am fascinated by all kinds of software and hardware.
As a logical consequence, I studied computer science at the ETH Zürich (Swiss Federal Instute of Technology) finishing with a Master degree in 1994. My major was theoretical computers science and information systems.
As a minor, I chose to take "transportation", a topic that ever since has fascinated me as an application for information technologies. After my studies, I spent one and a half years as a research assistant at the Institute for Transport Planning and Systems at the ETH Zürich. During this time, I implemented an expert system for technical accident analysis and on simulation of traffic flows.
Not having enough of computer science, I continued with a PhD until Summer 1999. My thesis was about Techniques For Satisfying Geometric Assembly Constraints and is available online.
For the next two years thereafter, my employer was Trilogy Software Inc. in Austin, TX. There I was a consultant and software developer with the configuration solution offering for the computer and telecom industry deployed at customers including Sun, IBM, HP, Compaq, Nortel, Nokia, Ericsson, and others.
Afterwards, I returned to Zurich, Switzerland, and worked as a manager at ELCA, a leading Swiss technology provider. My responsibilities included the ticketing solution SecuTix, activities in the transportation market, different mobile initiatives, and computer architectures based on Java, EJBs and web services.
Then, I returned to the ETH Zurich for a one-year sabbatical as a senior researcher, this time at the Group for Information Security chaired by David Basin. My main interest was the modeling of security in software projects. The project was partly founded by the EU project TrustCom.
From 2005 to 2008, I was head of development at SMA und Partner AG, a leading company in railway consulting. SMA offers a software solution, Viriato, for construction of timetables. Viriato is deployed at more than 70 customers in several countries, among others Deutsche Bahn (DB), Schweizer Bundesbahnen (SBB), and REFER in Portugal.
In 2009, I founded my own company: trafIT solutions providing software services to the transportation industry. Its strength is the combination of business knowledge and technical know-how. This is especially useful in projects where new solutions for business problems are elaborated iteratively.