The KNIME Team

Obviously KNIME is a lot bigger than just a few leaders and a board. Many great people have been with KNIME a few years already. Here is our current KNIME Team Hall of Fame:
 

Christian Albrecht: quickly changed his name from "Aalbrecht" to avoid getting in trouble with Iris. He is the one who plays with all browsers on all operating system 1982 and newer to make sure our WebPortal also works in the future.

Julia Arroyave: we needed a new team assistant and when Julia mentioned where she comes from, we didn't dare not hire her. Plus we still needed someone from Colombia on the team (and someone who actually knows how to spell Colombia correctly...).

Ketunya Asasu: Understanding what's going on within KNIME ought to be something a data analysis company does well. We did - kind of - but it was spread over the shoulders of many people who were supposed to do many other things, too. We knew from the first minute that with Ketunya we had found the perfect person to be in charge of instrumentation @ KNIME. She is fond of numbers, keen to start learning how to build cool workflows, and apparently has a jungle at home so she can keep climbing even if she isn't traveling.

Hayley Bertsch: the fights between Heather and Phil about the proper way to use English were getting old. Hence we decided to add some spice to it by throwing in a touch of real English from the other side of the world. Our marketing activities can only benefit from that, too. Wait for those videos with a New Zealand-ish accent ("plätform")...

Daniel Bogenrieder was apparently lured to us by Simon who addicted him to playing pool as well. In order to allow Simon to focus on other stuff (occasionally) we thought it would be best to hire him as well. Weirdly enough he focused on UX stuff at the university but still does practical, cool things at KNIME. His geographical skills are somewhat questionable, considering he moved to Allensbach recently.

Mallika Bose: we weren't quite sure if we should really add someone to the team who is just two dots away from being böse but then we thought: what the hell, she fits in so well! Plus KNIME can use a bit of an evil touch, especially when it comes to our social media activities.

Roland Burger: we had to teach those Berlin guys a bit of real German - so we snuck a Swabian accent into the office. Roland is helping us bring KNIME to a screen near you.

Convincing Peter Burger to join the team was hard. But in the end we cracked that nut, too. If you add an "e" to his bike, he will happily bike to the KNIME offices (and even more delightedly back home!). And suddenly we have a happy Peter taking care of all our IT needs.

Marc Bux: Mark claimed there can only be one Mark. So we made sure he is a Marc before we hired him. There is a non zero likelihood that the last remaining first line of code will soon be replaced by (his) faster one.

Temesgen Dadi: every now and then we hire someone who comes from another university group than that Berthold gang at Konstanz University. But we don't stray far, Temesgen spent a lot of time in Knut's group at FU Berlin gathering lots of bioinformatics expertise, which we will put to good use. With or without Knut's SeqAn nodes...

Rene Damyon: we finally found an addition to our server team. We had to fly him in from Down Under (ok, not quite but it sounds better that way) and he knows way too many shocking details about weird animals but luckily he left those at home (or makes us believe he did).

Nickolaus Dekay knows big data in and out which was one of the reasons we had to have him join our support crew. And somehow having every other support ticket being accompanied by a movie quote ought to add a nice touch for our customers. There are rumors about something happening with knives during his childhood but we never really got to the bottom of that.

Jason Denzin: The man who actually does make the perfect pizza (when it comes to shape, at least). But also someone who really enjoys instrumenting journeys which is something we desperately needed. The fact that he is based in Austin and doesn't seem to mind traveling to Konstanz for the harvest is another plus.

Lioba Eberspächer: a book keeper with a hobby: book keeping (no kidding she keeps the books for some friends on the weekend). It cannot get any better so Michael even forgave her for parking her car on his spot on her first day (although it's still unclear if he only didn't scratch it because her car is already pretty scratched).

Gabriel Einsdorf has been around for so long as part of our KNITA that we could not afford to lose him. Luckily he accepted and is now continuing to help our community but is also getting more involved in our build system. For some bizarre reason he never figured out how to use the stand-up paddle boards when he was a student, though. What do students do these days??

Emil: our tireless, 24/7 email coach. Christian wishes the VfB had such professional coaching.

Alexander Fillbrunn: he is still partially responsible for the PMML integration, didn't quite get turned into a bioinformatician during his time at the university, and is now getting involved in solving interesting problems together with our users. Some time ago he wanted to be a Berliner but on the way there got stuck in Stuttgart which, for once, has nothing to do with the local only so-so inspiring soccer team.

Scott Fincher: our number 3 in Texas - who has data science written all over him. We had to pull him over from the daRk side, but it only took a few days to turn him into a KNIMEr.

Heather Fyson: she makes us a truly international, multi-continental team, is the heart&soul behind our events and makes sure we use the real English!

Sebastian Gerau: rough. We needed a DevOps guy (no, nobody really knows what that means - but we knew we needed one!). But then this guy applied, but couldn't care less for baseball. Worse, he almost even went for a pro career in American Football. We decided to ignore that flaw and hire him anyway.

Jeff Gullick: number 002 in our Austin office and another one with real life big data experience. And finally someone with a useful hobby: we are looking forward to the first edition of KNIME Texas Bourbon coming out of his distillery. He will need to trade in his dogs for a couple of cats before Rosaria comes to visit the Austin office, though!

Before Satoru Hayasaka even started he had already contributed a year's worth of marketing material for KNIME: "Usually I have to teach a semester of programming before my students learn real data science - with KNIME they can start right away". And he is a great addition for our education team. We can't wait for the Japanese cookbook from the Iron KNIME Chef: oishii!

Sina Heilmann: We don't really have fancy titles but if someone deserves one it's Sina, our new Chief Swag Officer! Heather and Hayley had tears in their eyes when we finally brought someone on board who takes over this daunting task almost full time. Rumors have it that Sina is also running our marketing program on the side but finding interesting, useful, good quality, resource efficient and green and politically correct gadgets keeps her plenty busy. And of course, never the same one twice.

Moritz Heine: it's unclear to him and us if we hired him for his coding or his baking skills. His Brezelstangen are outstanding but Thorsten loves him for his Git nodes.

Stefan Helfrich: we were a bit reluctant to hire another person from the bio imaging community but he convinced us that he is open to working on interesting problems, too. He will be handling our academic alliances and making sure our research projects stay on track (we do also participate in non bioimaging ones, no matter what Christian says).

Benjamin Hemminger: after Christian, we swore we wouldn't hire another Swabian. Then we met Benjamin and found out that being a fan of terrible soccer teams is not a must if you are from Stuttgart. Lucky us, because he brings along much needed expertise with larger analytics projects and knows how to sensibly match inhouse resources to outside demand. And with a bit of luck he can help Christian with his obsession, too.

Martin Horn: if we ever want to open a KNIME office in one of the more dangerous corners of the world, Martin will take vacations to cycle there. But until then, he is doing great work on authenticating food and decoupling workflows from editors.

Mathilde Humeau: we've tried hard to bring Italian cornetto con crema into our offices. No success. All we ever end up with are gigantic "croissants". We always suspected they weren't the real thing so we brought Mathilde on board to monitor the quality of our morning pastries - in her spare time she also makes sure our customers remain happy, of course.

Lindsay Jones: it took a while for the idea to ripen in her mind but ultimately she caved in. Two years after we first met Lindsay at Data Days Texas she has finally joined KNIME and is now in charge of everything and more that has to do with our Austin office - and we have a hunch she will be data mining the hell out of our events data soon, too.

Christiane Kallfass: an event manager (almost) with a Knall. We just couldn't say no. And she practices "cardio tennis" (apparently a synonym for martial arts yoga) which will ensure this is the last time anyone makes fun of her last name.

Megan Kattawar will one day either run KNIME or at least ensure that everybody at KNIME is super healthy if she decides to run the KNIME fitness lab instead. Running a dog shelter in the KNIME offices is out, though. Sorry - they won't get along with Alison's cats. One way or another, we are all curiously observing where Megan's energy takes her!

Svenja Keller: after Julia decided that she likes organizing events much more than organizing an office occupied by a bunch of geeks, we needed to find someone with even stronger nerves. We figured a Pokemon Go Player Level 40 (breaking news: now level 42 and counting!) should just about do! We (ok: some of us...) are looking forward to having our very own Office Pokestops soon.

When Felix Kergl-Räpple applied for an internship, we were a bit puzzled. Not a computer scientist, no data science background. Neither Swabian nor a VfB fan. Weird. But he seemed excited about KNIME so we brought him on board anyway. And, as it turns out, we did need someone who knows how to tweak a KNIME workflow to provide a cohort analysis (and explain what that is) and just in general jump into every new challenge with a smile. He is quickly turning into a KNIME savvy financial business analyst - much to his and everybody else's surprise.

Wali Khan was introduced to us with "if you are looking for an ice breaker, Wali is actually an artist". We never really found out what that means but prefer to believe that he is Banksy anyway. What we do know is that he is Alice's soul mate - at least when it comes to kitchen accidents. They both frequently cut off (partially - so far) their fingers when cooking. What does he do at KNIME? We don't really care as long as he continues to build increasingly cool workflows!

Maria Khomych: it's ironic if you mess up the interview process of the person you are trying to hire to get better at hiring. Fortunately, Maria saw that as an opportunity and is now in charge of hiring at KNIME! You can keep ignoring inbound recruiter requests - but if Maria reaches out to you, you’d better reply! Plus, she is the first one who discovered the KNIME secret on day #1 of the onboarding with just one sharp question (Jim took years...).

Tobias Kötter ponders bisociative creativity support and is heading our big data development. And yes: er ist ein Berliner!

David Kolb leaps over tall buildings, catches bullets, runs faster than the speed of light, and he makes onions cry. And when David says his veggie burger looks, smells, and tastes like beef then it is beef!

Alice Krebs tried extremely hard to avoid meeting Michael during her interview because she seemed to think not being a computer scientist might be a problem. But since we needed someone who is biased by actual knowledge of the life science space, she was the perfect fit for Jeany's team. We also hired her because we need someone to help Thomas predict when his Lemke intake moves from just delightment to plain toxic.

Jamie Kurtz: It's well known that motor cycle gangs are the homes of the best account managers. So we were fortunate that we could wrestle Jamie Kurtz away from her group and make her part of our Austin team. She still hits the road on her Harley occasionally, but she is starting to enjoy dealing with corporate data science gangs more and more as well.

Greg Landrum: the second one who knows something about chemistry. He worries about open source cheminformatics in his other life and about Life Science, Guided Analytics and KNIME in this one.

Fabian Liße: (Christian - don't read this!) so far we've only had fans of second or third league soccer teams (they occasionally also play in higher leagues but don't last long). So adding a fan from a real soccer club was a no-brainer. And adding cultural diversity is always high on our list, so a resident from a real Freistaat was a must. Apart from helping FC Bayern Munich win the triple, Fabian has been off to a great start in our Customer Care team, too.

Björn Lohrmann: our first real Berliner, born, bred, raised, and brought on board here! But he is also part of the other B-team, working on Big Data, Big Clusters, and Big Clouds.

Thorsten Meinl: the man behind the KNIME build machine. He is also responsible for the chemistry extensions and is the only one on the team who believes Genetic Algorithms work.

Kathrin Melcher: the newest member of our evangelism team, adding lots of math expertise to the mix. Rumors have it that she keeps getting speeding tickets on lake Constance but we are still trying to get to the bottom of this.

Janina Mothes will be a great addition to the broader team once she learns how to let Thomas win at ping pong without it being that obvious. Until then, we'll keep her confined to the life science team. But secretly we are all waiting for her to win, hanging from her trapeze head-down, one arm tied behind her back.

Adrian Nembach: another one from the KNITA switches sides (probably only because he finally wanted to move downstairs). After finishing his master’s at Konstanz University, Adrian accepted the challenge to continue to create great science but explain it to real people - and now in less than an hour and without having everybody’s brains pop!

Eva Neuner interviewed with a smile, started with a smile, works with a smile, and even complains with a smile. So where else to put such a happy person than in customer success? If this is the result of Ikigai, then we all need to have some of that!

Tatiana Nesterova: joined our Customer Care team in our Zurich office shortly before Covid, but just in time to clash with Tilman over coffee quality during her first week. It's nice to be proactive when coffee runs low, but seriously: beans from the supermarket across the street for our coffee maniac (he prefers the term aficionado)? Don't try that with Paolo in the Berlin office....

Nora Ohlerich. It’s at somewhere around 100 or so people that "HR" becomes a real thing. Luckily for us, we managed to find someone who interprets human resources not as "employee life cycle management" (Maria's favorite phrase...) but focuses on the 'H' in 'HR'. Unfortunately we cannot reveal any of Nora's secret desires (besides the fact that she eats carrots in masses) as she would quickly file an HR case (and also, she finishes every other sentence with "...but don't put this on the team page!")

Cynthia Padilla: number 4 of our Austin team. After a long day of interviews she came in, and after 5 minutes we knew we just had to get her! We are looking forward to having her add her experience and awesome attitude to the customer care team.

Masoud Panshiri: after we realized Maarit isn't actually from Sweden we brought on board Masoud. We also needed an experienced account manager and a fan of a serious soccer team: Union Berlin.

Martyna Pawletta: someone who has experience with workflows _and_ pipelines doesn't exist? We did not accept that answer and we were right! Martyna unfortunately understands the construction workers outside of our Berlin office but fortunately knows lots more about cheminformatics than most of us ever needed to know.

Marten Kose: the newest member of our Berlin office, strengthening our data science skills. Plus he has experience with some of the other dinosaur software which may come in quite handy.

Davin Potts: no words needed here. Davin has been a KNIME fan before KNIME even started and has played some sort of a role since the beginning (most consistently as the local beer delivery guy). It's great to have him finally onboard regularly again.

Stephen Rauner tried to sell ‘growing up as a teenager in Las Vegas’ as enough content for this page. Also guitar playing and bartending don’t quite cut it, sorry. However, drinking Paul under the table during his first weeks at KNIME does - nice job! Ah, and he shares the Norwegian/German ancestry with Tom.

Sabrina Reiner: the other good soul in Konstanz and the one who does not only enjoy finance but is also good at it. Oddly enough, besides that passion and skill, she laughs a lot...

Michael Respondek: what's the best qualification for someone who is supposed to help our users with our software? Someone who used to be a user himself. Michael is just that and even though he refused to change his name, we hired him nevertheless, and convinced him to go by Micha to avoid total confusion. The pun on a support engineer having a name that rhymes with response & desk is too lame to add here.

Sasha Rezvina was originally brought on board to translate geek-speak into real-speak. But since she does that in her sleep we are now curious to see how her new found improvisation skills on the piano will find their way into our marketing material as well! She and Tim can probably compare notes on the difference between US and German taxi services but that's a different story.

Casiana Rimbu: hiring someone from Transylvania is always a bit risky. However, we thought: no risk, no designer eye. Watch out for a new, artistic (maybe at times a bit reddish?) look of the KNIME videos. We just hope that she didn't lie when she said the other eye is focused on science...

Lada Rudnitckaia: Michael and her got along well from day one. She doesn't understand a thing he says and he doesn't hear a word of what she says (both claim it's not lack of will - well, Michael does for all he knows). But even despite this total lack of communication, she has tackled evangelism instrumentation with a vengeance and taken over lots of our book editing.

Simon Schmid: for many years we didn't realize Simon was working at KNIME - he just seemed to drop by to play billiards. But Jason would have never forgiven us if we'd let Simon even think about not joining KNIME after his Masters. He relies on Simon for help with beer making, smoker operations, and the occasional line of code. Let's see if he can squeeze that in between a few games.

Tobias Schmidt: who would have thought you can find great JavaScript people in Konstanz? Tobias was the start of our local JS Dream Team hiring frenzy. The only issue with him is that we have yet to find anything to poke fun at. Stay tuned - rumors have it that he has a secret life as a Japanese super hero but we have yet to see evidence.

Peter Schramm is Daria’s counterpart. While she makes sure our documentation and also generally any type of text around KNIME makes sense, his job is to make sure it also looks and feels consistent. Look out for the version of the KNIME UI, code named KNIME.next which will bear his fingerprints. Let's hope his love for cheap (and not really good) German red wine doesn't get in the way too early.

Jakob Schröter: number 2 of our JS Dream Team and the one who contributed before even starting by connecting us with Julia (who ended up joining before him in the end...). He needs to work on his pool skills, though. We can't have him block the table for hours just to sink the first ball.

Christian Stohr likes to bike and climb which should help break down the sport silos at KNIME a bit. He was brought on board specifically to break things, which should give Thomas a bit of a break. But we really need him as our secret joker for truly complex Server setups!

Kevin Sturm: every now and then pandemics have positive side effects. Kevin's world tour was cut short so he decided to pick his second choice: helping our customers around the world with data science. On top of that, he seems to be quite the coffee aficionado so maybe Tilman and Tatiana can learn a thing or two from him.

Paolo Tamagnini: adding to the Italian team, we had to add Rome to the mix. Now Rosaria, Vincenzo, and Paolo can explain to the rest of us where the best pasta, wine, and sugo comes from. And Paolo can explain to everybody at KNIME what beautiful and useful visualizations have in common.

Kilian Thiel: the other bisociative thinker and responsible for our partner program. Plays ping pong with Tobias (which makes him a Berliner, too) and is responsible for the Text Mining extensions.

Daria Tombolelli. We wanted to hire her - that much was clear. It just took a while to find the perfect role. Fortunately for us, Daria was patiently working with us and is now in charge of ensuring our technology is well described and documented. And she adds another accent to our Italian language mix.

We got lucky Zachary Trubow didn't follow his fellow high school student Joey Tribiani to LA but stuck around a bit longer to join KNIME. Providing great support to KNIME users ought to be better than starring in a sitcom anyway. We'll promise to add soundtrack and off stage entertainment, Zach!

Vincenzo Tursi: the newest and youngest KNIMEr. Enthusiasm coupled with Italian humor, we just couldn't resist. Watch out for a different type of Italian accent in our videos soon...

Jason Tyler: we would have hired him just because he makes his own beer andhis entire neighborhood enjoys the clouds from his Smoker (even though he uses pellets, which came as a bit of a shock to all of us). However, he also knows about the IT type clouds which is the official reason why we brought him on board.

Alison Walter: everybody gets depressed in Konstanz around November. Not Alison. However, the rest of the year she complains that the weather here is too nice. We might have to open up an office in Northern Wisconsin after all, just to keep her happy. Alison - did you notice? No mentioning of cats!

Corey Weisinger: when Corey applied from Detroit we worked hard to convince him that hot, humid weather most of the year and ice rain for the rest is actually fun (we may have phrased it just a tad differently, though...). We have a hunch he will relocate to Konstanz soon, now that he has found out that biking to the Austin office isn't "ideal" under either condition.

Maarit Widmann: for someone who likes winter, moving from Finland to Konstanz seems an odd move. I guess it shows how much she enjoyed KNIME (or maybe it's just her husband's stuck here?). You'll see more from her (mostly during summer, though) in our online courses and other education material.

Phil Winters: the oldest (by far) on the team. But also the one who actually knows how to really mine data. 'Cuz he's been doing it for ages!

Carl Witt ist ein Berliner. Bizarrely enough, a happy one which, according to our other true Berliners is extremely rare. He thinks we brought him on board because of his PhD thesis, which had to do with workflows, but in reality we are all curious to find out what these Volcano Plots are that he invented and want to see them in KNIME! The only drawback is that his website uses Word Press which will drive Tom (and probably also Paul) up the wall.